The World is Changed
by Mirrordance
Summary: Rebuilding a war-ravaged world begins immediately after victory at the Black Gates. Heroes and soldiers become Kings, Princes and administrators as they build families, societies and legacies in a changed, more peaceful world. A collection of Post-ROTK one-shots starting with "Triage" where, before all the work begins, Legolas first has to look after himself and find his friends.
1. 1: Triage

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**"Triage"**

_The work of rebuilding a war-ravaged world begins immediately after victory at the Black Gates. But first, Legolas has to look after himself and find his friends._

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_The Morannon_  
_Third Age, 3019_  
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The dead were left where they fell.

Those injured but able to walk delivered themselves to the nearest aid station, these small camps set on the fringes of the battlefield.

Those injured and unable to do so remained where they were for assistance by able-bodied comrades who could bring them in, or in the absence of these, to await retrieval from litter-bearers who could enter the field at the conclusion of the fighting.

Legolas Greenleaf numbered amongst the second category – more or less. When Sauron fell, the eagles came, and the masses of their enemies retreated, the battle was over and won. But it was finished _for him_, only when he caught sight, no matter how fleeting, of his friends still-standing at various ends of the field. Only then did he allow himself to leave, dragging himself to aid using a commandeered orc spear as a walking stick.

He practically collapsed on top of one of the harried healers receiving the surge of injured soldiers, but having gotten this far on his own steam, the Woodland Prince knew he was still better off than most of the ailing men in his midst.

The healer set him down to lie on the ground, and he bit back a hoarse, pained cry – his left leg was broken between hip and knee, and even the gentle landing had spots dancing in his eyes and his stomach churning.

"Tell me where you hurt, soldier, quickly now," the healer told him in a clipped voice as she motioned for a young boy, a child really, to come forward and assist her.

Legolas gasped as the healer and the boy started divesting him of his cloak and released him of the straps that held his weapons. The small movements were away from his injury, but every shift sent fire up and down his nerves.

"Broken left leg, that is all," he hissed, which had the healer quickly abandoning his upper body and turning toward his legs. "The fracture did not break skin."

The boy took over removing Legolas' weapons and personal effects, looking at the curious, obviously un-Gondorian pieces carefully before putting them inside a sack. In the meantime, the healer quickly took a knife to Legolas' left boot and breeches, and tossed aside the pieces to expose the battered limb beneath.

"How could you have walked on this?" she asked with a grimace, as she felt at the surroundings of the injury.

He'd fought on it as he had to, _and then_ walked on it. But perhaps she did not need to know all that.

"I had to," Legolas replied through grit teeth as he craned his neck to take stock of the limb himself. It was inflamed and discolored, misshapen from misaligned, fractured bones. It looked both better than he feared and worse than he hoped. He lowered his head to the ground and shuddered.

The healer barked orders at the boy to get bandages and splints, then abandoned the leg for the moment in favor of Legolas' head. She reached two hands to his neck, felt his pulse, and turned his face from side to side all while observing the movement of his eyes.

"No apparent injuries to the head or neck," she murmured, then lowered her hands over his chest and felt his heart and his breathing. She nodded to herself in satisfaction, and helped ease him out of his tunic such that his torso was now covered only in a thin shirt. She lifted it to expose his chest and stomach, and pressed at his ribs and abdomen gently. "No apparent injuries to the organs within," she added.

She lowered his shirt quickly, for his trembling did not escape her. "It is just as you said, and I am pleased to report there is still good circulation in the extremities below the break. You will live."

"I gathered," Legolas said wryly.

Her lip turned up in mild appreciation of his morbid humor, as she grabbed at one of the thick blankets from her supplies and laid it over his upper body and uninjured leg.

"You are in mild shock from the pain though," she relayed, "and we will alleviate that with warmth and medicine. I will also immobilize the injury. That will have to be it for many hours however, I'm afraid. I am qualified to assess injuries here but not set your leg, and our surgeons are overwhelmed and heavily engaged in more serious injuries."

"I understand," Legolas said with a nod. "I appreciate your time and your straightforwardness."

While they waited for the boy to return with the supplies she requested, she served him hot, medicated tea and tucked the blankets beneath him to stave off the chill. She then used a small pot of paint to lightly smear a yellow mark on his blanket near his shoulder, which he assumed was indicative of the status of his health. She left his side to tend to a rush of new arrivals.

For a long moment, he was left to his own devices. The medicine he was given was not nearly enough to dull his pain, and he deduced the healer had given him a human dose based on what she estimated from his age and bulk. It was far from appropriate to satisfy the demand of an elven body. She'd either never treated the Eldar before, or had somehow mistaken him for an _adan_.

He tried to draw upon his own strength and meditations, and he hovered in this quiet, gray place patiently. He also watched as his healer and the rest of her troop of first-line aid providers worked. They quickly evaluated the incoming soldiers and then attended to them according to both immediacy of need and likelihood of survival.

Soldiers in serious states but were likely to recover with immediate treatment were attended to quickly. They were barely in the aid station long enough to get a bright red mark painted somewhere on their bodies, before they were whisked away in litters to a surgical tent further away from the battlefield.

Those who required further treatment but could survive to wait, like Legolas himself, were marked in yellow and settled either sitting or lying down in the aid station. There they would have to wait for an indefinite period of time, for transfer to the surgeons only when the worst cases were finished.

There were soldiers with mild injuries too, and they were marked in green and ushered to a dressing station for minor forms of treatment. There were bandages here, and stores of blankets to ward off the cold, hard soaps and towels to wash off grime and prevent infections on small cuts, and apprentices who could administer salves on contusions or do stitches.

Some soldiers too far gone to live no matter the aid they received were given stark black marks, and settled comfortably in a quiet corner of the tent away from the bustle of new entrants and treatment activities. There they were plied with painkillers, cocooned in blankets, and given final blessings and comfort by their friends or comrades.

The whole scene rushed across Legolas' bleary gaze; as a Prince of the constantly-harried Woodland, he has been fighting battles since his youth but not on this massive a scale on an open field. He was more versed in stealth and skirmish beneath the constraint and uneven terrain of the forests. He'd had some experience, yes – in the Battle of the Five Armies, in Helm's Deep and most recently before the Morannon, at the Pelennor Fields. But it was all still strange to him, the efficient systems required by mass-scale fighting and the deaths and injuries they yielded.

When the boy who had initially attended him finally returned, he looked as if he had gone through battle himself. He was breathless, grimed, and apologetic, apparently having been drafted into assisting someone else first, and then someone else after that, and so on. But he had found everything that he was instructed to secure.

The healer who had treated Legolas earlier returned when she saw the boy too, and she now had blood staining her arms all the way up past her elbows. She washed vigorously at a basin of fragrant water and dried her hands on white cloths before touching him.

"Do I need to tell you this will hurt?" she asked, but did not leave him much time to ponder on it.

Legolas cried out and his mind flew for a moment, as she worked two splints and a series of straps around his broken leg. When his thinking cleared, he realized he was writhing and shaking in pain, and the boy was having a hard time holding him down. He fought to take better control of his body.

The boy relaxed too, and backed away with a signal from the healer. She assessed again, Legolas' gaze, his pulse, and his breathing.

"Are you with us, soldier?"

"Not... not going anywhere... trussed thus," he replied breathily.

Her eyes twinkled and she nodded in satisfaction. "That would be wise if you want to recover proper use of the limb." She rearranged the blankets about him, which he did not even realize he had dislodged in his struggles. "You are still in stable condition, but not without risk. You are courting shock, soldier, and there are other hidden dangers with long bone injuries. I beg you keep it immobile, you have damaged yourself enough, especially as I can make no promises on your impending removal from here. I do not know when you can get further treatment or transfer to better quarters, as you know. But if you do not deteriorate further, this should hold for now. I or my colleagues will return sporadically to ensure you do not get any worse."

She stated to reinforce the yellow mark on Legolas' blanket with another coat of paint, while the boy entered his field of vision.

"I would need a name for your effects, sir," he said. "These will be set aside, transferred to proper camp, and you can retrieve them at a later time."

Legolas nodded in understanding. He wanted badly for his custom, twin white knives, the leafy brooch that was his token of the Fellowship and the bow gifted by the Lady Galadriel to remain on his person, but he did not want to be disruptive to the systems in place.

"Legolas Greenleaf," he said simply.

The boy's jaw fell open.

The healer who attended him stopped mid-stroke on the mark she was darkening upon his blanket. She dropped the pot of yellow paint impatiently to the ground, wiped her stained fingers upon her apron, and reached to pull his tangled hair away from his grimed, sweat-slick face and put them behind his delicately-tipped elven ears. She had missed them in her initial, injury-focused assessment, just as he suspected.

She pulled her hand away as if stung, and hurriedly dug into her pockets as she spoke. "I am sorry, my lord. Or is it 'your highness?' I did not recognize you from the blood and grime of battle." She called out insistently for nearby colleagues to come to her aid.

"Did you really single-handedly fell a pack of _mumakil_ at the Pelennor, my lord?" the errand boy asked, awed. He was hugging the heavy sack of Legolas' things reverently.

Legolas was usually more indulgent of the wonder of children, but the healer's frantic movements confused and worried him. Two other healers scurried to his side, and his eyes widened when the woman who had treated him drew out a pot of red paint from her skirts and reached for him.

"What are you doing?" he gasped, squirming away and trying to ignore the flare of pain caused by the movement.

"You will be transported to quarters more appropriate to your rank post haste my lord," she replied, "and will receive immediate treatment there from the royal physician himself. I am heartily sorry for all the time you've had to wait."

He dodged the red paint at the cost of a fresh wave of dizzying pain, but at that moment he would happily take it rather than subject himself to what they had planned.

"There are more serious wounds," he argued, "I can wait. I will wait." For a long, horrifying moment, he thought they hadn't heard him or were going to ignore him, for they were busying themselves with preparing him for movement.

"Protocol is different for nobles and royals," the healer explained as she made another attempt to mark him. "If anything should befall you, the diplomatic effects will be outsize. Our King would have to account for you to your King. If you must know, my lord – your highness?– there is a bulletin released specifically to keep a look out for you."

Legolas still did not like it. And so in his best muster of his royal blood he declared with finality –

"I am son of Thranduil the Elvenking, Prince of the Woodland Realm, and staunch ally and good friend to the heir of Isildur," he said imperviously. "I command you to desist. I refuse treatment beyond your established medical protocols of triage, rather than your diplomacy. Many others are in greater need of your aid and I beg you not to waste any more time arguing with me on this. Aragorn will agree with me, and I can guarantee you my father, himself a soldier, will prefer it this way."

His commanding tone silenced the room, and the healers looked at each other hesitantly, before complying. The two new arrivals left him with solemn bows on account not only of his rank, but respect for his decision. 'His' healer remained a moment longer.

"I am sorry my lord," she said. "If I had noticed who you were earlier, I would have acted without your consultation. This decision – nay, this sacrifice - should never have been placed upon you. If I had noticed who you were earlier, you would have been long out of here and in relief."

"It is good that you did not recognize me then," Legolas said. His leg was throbbing and his heart was racing, and he was self-aware enough to know that he may regret foregoing immediate treatment later if - when - the pain becomes more pronounced. But it was still the right thing to do.

"I will check upon you frequently for any time you might change your mind," she said. "And if you insist on waiting, you will still be first out of here and scheduled for treatment amongst those who share your health status." He opened his mouth to argue for waiting in line, but she put her foot down. "We will not compromise further on this. If it bothers you my lord, then think of it not as a deference to your rank but a bid to secure your complete recovery. We have to protect the invaluable skills you have been serving us with. Now I must continue with my work. But is there anything I can do for you before I go?"

"I would like word on the status of my friends," he replied. "Last I saw them at the conclusion of the fighting, they were relatively well but I wish to know for certain. I speak of the King," Aragorn had not been crowned yet but she knew who he meant, "Gimli the dwarf, the White Wizard, Eomer King of Rohan, two elves from Imladris, and a handful of hobbits."

"There are a number of aid stations such as this that they may have gone to," she said, "But inquiries of them is the least that we can do for you, my lord. We will also inform them of your well-being, and your whereabouts." Because he hesitated, she pressed, "Is there anything else?"

He licked his lips and swallowed at rising nausea. The pain of his leg was rapidly encasing him, as the battle faded from his veins. "Only if, if supplies can accommodate," he replied shakily, "my people require larger doses of medicine for pain than men. I can barely feel the effects of the first you'd given. We burn through them quickly, you see. But I ask only if supplies can accommodate."

"They will for you," she promised. "I will return with them." She hurried away, leaving Legolas in the still-awed company of the young Gondorian errand boy.

Legolas looked at him wryly, and decided it would be a good distraction from the pain to answer his questions. "A pack of mumakil is perhaps an exaggeration, lad. But they are surprisingly easy to fell, once you find the nerve to come closer."

He brightened, and said eagerly. "I was forced into hiding in the city with the other children. But your deeds were seen by many and stories spread across our land. We are all grateful, my lord. And perhaps I too, can help you in some small fashion. I've been sent from one end of the battlefield to another in service of miscellaneous tasks, you see. And I think I have information you would find valuable."

Legolas took a deep breath in anticipation, all thought of his burning leg rapidly thrust into the background.

"Two hobbits were brought in from Mordor by the mighty eagles," the boy shared. "Alive, but doing poorly. Lord Aragorn and the wizard tends them, and waiting in the wings is another hobbit, the one who had served Ruling Steward Denethor. He was perfectly well, but very worried for his friends. The two other elves in the field - the twin sons of the Lord of Rivendell I understand - they've lent their healing skills to the surgeon's tents. Gimli the dwarf and King Eomer of Rohan, last I saw, have been scouring the fields with a party of soldiers and aiding in bringing in the injured and dying. Now that I think on it, given what the healer had said, they may have been specifically looking for you."

"If you are not indisposed to more important work," Legolas said, "I would appreciate if you can divest them of that one concern. Tell them I am well and cared for, so that they can better employ their attentions elsewhere. They have more pressing duties than this."

"You all take your duties very seriously my lord," the boy said with awe.

Legolas sighed. "We must, for there is really so much that we still need to do."

The boy nodded. "I suppose I'd best do that for you now, then. Perhaps they will still be where I last saw them."

Legolas nodded at him gratefully, and watched as he ran off. The child left Legolas' sack of personal effects in his haste, and the elf reached for it when he saw the brooch that marked him as one of the Nine Walkers winking at him from the sack's half-open top. He grunted as he angled to release it from his cloak.

He was exhausted, cold, and in blinding pain. There was also so much still that he needed to do, things he now had to accomplish with limited mobility, at that. But he managed to free the bauble, and it was a small victory. He held it to his chest and closed his eyes.

He and his friends were alive.

It was a good start.

**THE END**  
February 27, 2019


	2. 2: Old and New

**Hello everyone :)**

I almost always shoot my own foot of so to speak, posting weekday updates - and goodness a Monday too! I know I will take a hit on readership and reviews but I am in one of those moods. Sometimes I read a review from a fic that hits the spot and suddenly I am pulling something out of the stable before I should, lol - but as I've said before, I like thinking of sites like ffnet, flawed though it may sometimes be, as an essentially safe space where we can encourage and inspire each other. So to all those who move me - thank you for taking the time to read, follow, and especially to review :) Personalized responses out soon :)

In the meantime... here is the second installment to this post-ROTK series of stand-alone one-shots. If you follow my work, I think you may have noticed that "The World is Changed" is a sister collection of "The Halls of My Home" (pre-LOTR one-shots based on Legolas' life in Mirkwood with Thranduil). There will be many parallels, so I hope you enjoy this series too :)

As always, comments and criticism are always welcome :) Hoping everyone has a lovely week! Without further ado -

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**"Old and New"**  
_A new King quickly realizes he has no time for old friends. Aragorn struggles with the fresh weight of his crown, and the unexpected sacrifice it requires._

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_Minas Tirith_  
_After the Return of the King_  
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Aragorn gradually shed the walking parade that usually trailed after Elessar, the newly installed, long-awaited King of Gondor.

Skin by skin he extricated himself from them, like a man gradually removing layers of clothes as he went from the cold outdoors and into the warm intimacy of his home.

Little by little, he became more himself again.

At the steps to the main doors of the King's House, he left behind the councilors who stubbornly dogged him with their miscellaneous concerns – issues they wished to address privately, random agendas not covered by the council meetings, favors and pleas, and so on.

At the steps, they mercifully left him alone. This was after all his home, and it was late in the day. The councilors were bound by protocol not to approach further unless expressly invited by the King into his house.

And Aragorn was not of a mind to invite _anyone_.

He left behind half his royal guards there as well for good measure, and they kept a careful watch that these trailing courtiers or anyone else went no further to encroach upon the King's peace and privacy.

Once inside the closed doors, he sighed in relief.

He was still followed by his handful of personal guards and a secretary, but at least it was blessedly quiet. They walked toward the King's private wing. It had sleeping and bathing chambers, as well as an informal dining room, a sitting room, an office and a receiving room for his exclusive use. There were other similar, if much smaller and less lavish apartments in the King's House. An adjacent one to his own was meant for his Queen and the children they would have, and there was a separate wing of chambers for high-ranking nobles and guests of the royal family.

Since his triumphant return and crowning in Minas Tirith a few days' past, the guest residences have been occupied by friends and allies from the War of the Ring. The royal siblings of Rohan were there; as was the late Ruling Steward's son, Faramir. Also staying in was Imrahil, the formidable Prince of Dol Amroth; Aragorn's borrowed brothers, the twin sons of Lord Elrond of Imladris; and the indispensable members of the Fellowship of the Ring.

He paused from walking and stood still, looking down this hall of guest apartments with longing. They held his dearest friends, with whom he'd not had a chance to speak at length for a while now, even if they were so near.

Every night at the conclusion of his day's business, he hoped there would be time to share a meal with them, or a drink, or _good gods_, a smoke. Unfortunately it was almost always too late, especially since many of his desired company had been hurt in the War and were still recovering. He tried to listen for sounds of life and conversation, some gathering he could join. But just as it had been since they returned and his time became less his own, it was too late.

The hall was quiet and dimly lit, lined by closed doors.

Royal guards of particular colors stood outside certain apartments – one in Rohan's banners marked where Eowyn and Eomer stayed. Imrahil had a guard upon his door too, liveried in the colors of his house. A Gondorian soldier kept watch over Faramir's quarters, and another kept watch upon Legolas'.

The protocol officers in Gondor were very strict about how they treated nobility. It was a traditional kingdom and a hierarchical one; traits it never lost even amidst the ravages of war, and one it was quick to reclaim now that there was order and a new King.

Legolas was assigned a royal guard by virtue of his status as an elven Prince. As there were no soldiers from the Woodland Realm about, the stern-faced young man guarding him was on loan from Gondor and outfitted thus, but with a patch symbolizing Legolas' forest home on his arm.

The guards were not the only presence in the silent hall. Mixed amongst them were a smattering of white-robed healers, sitting quietly at vigil and occupying themselves with folding binding cloths or sewing. These individuals were assigned here from the healing halls, to make regular checks upon the wounded and to be available for any eventuality, given the still-delicate conditions of some of the convalescent guests.

It's been just a few weeks since the Battle of the Morannon, which ended the War of the Ring in their favor with the fall of Sauron. Those who've been hurt the worst have barely begun recovering, and some of his dearest friends were among them.

"How is everyone settling in?" he inquired of them with his secretary. It was, perhaps, more accurate to call the bookish, efficient young man as _a_ secretary though, rather than _his_.

The young man was borrowed from the efficient traveling entourage of Imrahil. It was the Prince of Dol Amroth, after all, who had initial control of Gondor after the death of Denethor and the near-fatal injury to his still-incapacitated son and successor, Faramir. With Faramir down for the count and Imrahil rightfully yielding control of the city to Aragorn, the new King needed all the help he could get. He happily took in the young man according to Imrahil's recommendations and has found him efficient and unimposing.

And so the secretary steered Aragorn everywhere, managing his day, taking him from place to place as he picked up the pieces of his war-torn country. The young man was as essential to his sanity now as the guidance he received from Gandalf, his brothers Elladan and Elrohir, and the Council of Gondor.

They were doing remarkably well, all things considered. The lands were being cleared of residual evil; memorials were made for the dead; the healing halls were no longer overwhelmed; the public cooperated with the curfews, price controls and rationing of food, drink, candles, firewood and oil; rebuilding was well underway in the city and the fortifications around it; outside relations and trade routes were being re-established; agricultural assets were being prioritized and cultivated; arrangements were being made for children to return to schooling...

Back-pay for soldiers and pensions for widows and orphans still needed proper financing and accounting, however, but that would be linked to revenue generating activities including taxation -

_Stop_, he told himself. Thinking of one thing related to work almost always became a string of concerns and then a litany of them.

_It will all still be there tomorrow._

"Lord Faramir, Lady Eowyn and Master Meriadoc are recovering nicely," Aragorn's secretary reported, and he focused instead on good news. "Residual weaknesses remain, but nothing unexpected. The Ring-bearers, Masters Frodo and Samwise, are not quite so steady on their feet yet. But their coloring has improved, they are eating better, and are more lengthily engaged."

Aragorn nodded in approval, until he added – "And Prince Legolas had his second turn at the surgeon's theater today. The procedure was deemed successful, and he is expected to-"

"He – what?"

"Prince Legolas had his second surgery-"

"Why am I hearing of this only now?" Aragorn asked, having considerable trouble keeping his voice down. It would do no one any good if he woke up the entire residence.

"He said it was just a continuation of repairs on his broken leg, nothing of consequence," the secretary replied nervously. "Did I do anything wrong, sire? I inquire of him and everyone else daily, in accordance with your instructions. I speak to the healers, as well as the subjects themselves-"

Aragorn pressed fingers against the bridge of his nose. "What, precisely, did they say?"

"The healers said there was malunion on the healing limb," the secretary answered quickly, "and upon this diagnosis, they needed prompt action, hence this afternoon's procedure so soon after our arrival. I visited with the Prince himself before the surgery, and he looked to be in good health and humor. He specifically told me that I need not bother you with the specifics of the whole thing. Sire, was I wrong? I am well and truly sorry-"

Aragorn cut him off with a raised hand and sighed. "Make a formal note of this if you must, my friend. When it comes that particular wood-elf: the less he wants to tell me about something, the more I need to know about it."

The secretary looked up at the ceilings and murmured the reminder to himself. "The less he wants to tell you, the more you need to know..."

He still looked confused.

Aragorn sighed again. "He has that effect." The King turned to the secretary and the guards trailing them. "You are all dismissed for the night."

The guards looked at each other, and then at the secretary.

"Sire," he said warily, "Security protocol requires we escort you to your chambers, and guards set to your door."

"Protocol will be as I deem it," Aragorn said with finality. He did not invoke this tone easily but it was late, he was tired, and he apparently had yet more to do. He was also irate at a certain wood-elf.

_He has that effect..._

Besides, if he were to be a true King, he had to set his own boundaries at some point and now was as good a time as any to attempt it.

"Thank you for your service today, gentlemen," said the King, as he turned into the hallway leading to the guest wing. "I will see you bright and early tomorrow."

He left them where they stood, and he cared little when his most senior guard left hushed instructions to one of the soldiers in the hall. Aragorn knew they would leave him alone as he had expressly instructed, and would just have to work around his preferences.

In the meantime he headed for Legolas' door at the end of the hall, as marked by the Gondorian soldier bearing the colors of the Elvenking Thranduil's woodland. The soldiers and healers he passed bowed at him, a gesture he could only return with a preoccupied nod as he came closer to his goal. The healer nearest to Legolas' chambers bowed too, and waited expectantly for her King's inquiries.

"Brief me on that foo- the honorable Prince's condition, please."

"The King is of course aware of the fracture on his leg from the Morannon," she replied. "The injury was not immediately immobilized while he fought, nor was it immediately tended when the fighting ended. He was not prioritized for treatment owing to battle triage. A broken leg from a hardy elf with a high pain threshold, good responsiveness and steady vital signals did not make for an emergency. He also ah..." she searched for the proper words.

_He has that effect..._

"His highness was also adamant in refusing to be treated first on account of his rank," she managed. "He insisted on keeping to the triage. When the injury was finally seen to, he'd been waiting for hours and of course conditions were not ideal. Prognosis was good when the procedure ended but all too shortly afterwards, we moved out from the battlefield station and off to proper camp at the Cormallen. The conditions of battle, the delay of treatment and the prompt move did him no favors."

"Infection set in," Aragorn remembered, for this at least he was aware of. "He suffered badly. It was rough going for a few days but he was much better by the time we'd set out for Minas Tirith."

He was sure. He had checked. Even with his advisors urging to return to the city faster, he held back. From a security perspective, it was safer to be within city walls with evil forces still about. He also wanted his soldiers and his friends to be in cleaner, warmer and surroundings more conducive to recovery. It was also politically advantageous; the King had to be crowned and order established quickly.

But Aragorn refused to move from the Cormallen until he received medical assurances that the process would not be detrimental to the health of any of the survivors of the battle and particularly, Frodo, Sam and Legolas.

Frodo and Sam's condition he kept an eye on closely, and he was heavily involved in their treatment. But he'd gone to see Legolas specifically too, even if he inextricably had to triage attention away from the wood-elf in between seeing to his kingdom and tending to the hobbits.

Legolas did not begrudge it (he had Gimli and the Imladris twins for rotating company) and had looked well enough after a few days of rest and proper treatment. The Prince even managed to hobble up (braced on one side by a disapproving Elrohir and Gimli on the other) and watch Aragorn be crowned at the gates of Minas Tirith when they arrived, hadn't he?

Aragorn was _sure_. He had_ checked_. He looked for friendly faces in the sea of strangers and their eyes met in the thick, jubilant crowd. The wood-elf's brilliant eyes were shining and laughing...

"He was healing," Aragorn said, "I was so certain."

"Elves mend quickly that is true," the healer agreed. "It was a marvel to all of us. But even as he healed he was still in disproportionate pain, one even he recognized to be unnatural. We realized why when the swelling abated some. The previous infection had damaged bone, and there was misalignment in the limb when it rebuilt and re-formed connections."

Aragorn closed his eyes in sympathetic misery. "Hence the procedure today. You broke his leg anew to set it right."

The healer nodded gravely. "Else he would have had some irregularity in form, lost agility, and likely chronic pain for the rest of his life. It had to be broken again promptly, before the faulty repairs became stronger and harder to re-break and set, and before it damaged other body parts that would have compensated for the flaw, like his hips or knees. It was better this way."

_Was it really_, Aragorn wondered, for he would have preferred the elf gathered more rest and strength first, given his recent setback with infection and their all too recent arrival. But that was one healer's assessment and, he winced, he'd not been there to see Legolas and therefore was in no position to know any better, was he?

He hadn't been there.

He opened his eyes and looked at Legolas' closed door, and miserably reflected on the likely state of the elf within. He would be hurting, to put it mildly. This second surgery was the crowning glory of a miserable saga that began weeks ago with the initial injury. It has since been compounded by hours of waiting for treatment, the first surgery, movement over untamed roads, infection that ate at his bones, and the malunion as he healed. And now Legolas had to contend with this - the re-breaking of a bone and the slow, painful recovery sure to follow it. Never let it be said, _oh no_, Aragorn reflected, that the reclusive wood-elves of Thranduil were not made of the sternest stuff.

"I should have been told," Aragorn muttered, but more to himself. "I should have been with him."

_Some healing hands this king has_, he thought bitterly,_ if they cannot be employed upon those he loves_.  
"He said he was a soldier like any other," the healer said, as nervous by the new King's displeasure as the secretary had been, for Aragorn's character and temperament was still not known amongst his people. "And that it was a broken bone like any other too, the setting of which anyone with even just a quarter of the King's knowledge and experience would know to do."

"I hope he was not alone at least," Aragorn said, barely keeping the edge from his voice. Who was party to the conspiracy of silence that kept him from knowing what was going on with Legolas?

"Master Gimli the dwarf was there waiting for him," replied the healer, "Along with Master Peregrin Took on behalf of the other halflings, all of whom wished the elf well even if they could not be there to wait on him for they too, were convalescing. The wizard Gandalf had joined as well, and visits have since been made by other people. Such loyal friends."

"Aren't they?" Aragorn said through grit teeth, upset that the proclamation did not include him.

"The Lords Elladan and Elrohir of Imladris participated in the procedure."

Aragorn took a long, calming breath. He was at least assured by the presence of the two fine healers well-versed in the peculiarities of elven healing. Their knowledge of the heavier does of pain medication required to dull the elves' sharper senses would have benefited Legolas greatly.

But assured as he was with his good friend's relative well-being in his twin brothers' capable hands, Aragorn was aggrieved by the realization that he didn't even notice he'd not seen them or Legolas or any of the Fellowship all this day. In afterthought, he'd not seen them all of yesterday either. And not one of them had seen fit to seek him out and speak to him of this!

"How is he now?" Aragorn asked, curbing his bitter tone.

"He is still sleeping," she replied. "The surgical site has spotted bleeding and is slightly swollen but that is not unexpected. Neither is the fever. He will certainly wake in pain, but there are medicines ready for him to take promptly. His friends have been taking turns keeping vigil, and now one of the Rivendell elves are sitting with him."

Aragorn nodded and reached for the door handles. Legolas' intrepid guard beat him to it though, and opened the doors for the King smartly and ushered him inside.

The room, which he had never been in, was a more compact version of his private chambers, having only an outside sitting room with a desk and a sleeping chamber beyond. It was aglow and warmed by a raging fireplace – a rare sight in a city under war rations, but apparently direly needed by the unconscious elf within.

Aragorn grimaced at the sight of his usually vibrant friend, whose dark-rimmed eyes were sunken and closed in unnatural sleep. He was marble-pale, unmoving beneath a thick blanket save for his heavily bandaged and intricately trussed up, slightly pillow-raised left leg. The healers were taking no chances about movement or further misalignment now; the limb was immobilized brutally, with a long splint from heel to hip on the exterior side of the leg, and a short splint from heel to mid-thigh on interior. They were bound together with thick boards beneath the limb, using padded leather straps that were also secured against the bed.

Standing beside Legolas was one of Aragorn's foster brothers, who was looking at him expectantly and with mild humor. He had already vacated his seat next to the bed, knowing Aragorn would want claim upon it.

"I heard you interrogating everyone outside," said Elladan.

The Imladris elf's handsome face was turned up in an easy smile. His dark hair fell loose beyond his shoulders to his back, and he was in luxurious robes partly open over comfortable, well-worn bedclothes. He looked at ease, which in turn, eased Aragorn somewhat too.

"Should I expect the same barrage of questions?" asked the elf.

Aragorn shook his head mournfully and reached for one of Legolas' slack hands as he took the wordlessly proffered chair. He placed fingers at the wrist and counted out the elf's pulse, out of need for some reassurance. It was not the sluggish beat of one who was heavily drugged, and he expected the elf would wake soon.

"I should have been here for him," Aragorn said quietly. "But perhaps even before that – I should have been there for him from the beginning, right from when he'd taken hurt. The Battle of the Morannon was over weeks ago, brother. Do you understand what that means? Legolas, who was always only ever-loyal to me even at the risk of death – has been in unimaginable pain every single day since. Every single day for weeks, and all I've done for him were short visits, distant inquiries and dragging him around from place to place. Some healing hands this king has."

Elladan _tsked_ at him. "I know you Estel, when you are in these moods I cannot sway your views. But I must point out – you are but a man, and we all here are bound by the physical rules of space and time. When, pray tell, would you have had opportunity to see to Legolas when you were fighting to keep Frodo and Sam alive, while you were trying to defeat evil, feed an army and sustain a city?"

"I managed to tend Merry, Lady Eowyn and Faramir-"

"You were not King yet then," Elladan countered, "and they had wounds that demanded your particular expertise. All Legolas had, serious as it turned out to be, was a broken leg. He sought healing when able, was prioritized accordingly, and tended by skilled healers. We cannot ask more of him, others, or ourselves. Who's to say he would not have suffered what he did even if you had paid attention as early as the Morannon? Sometimes, unforeseen complications are just what they are."

"That does not absolve me," Aragorn insisted. "I should have made time for someone who has proven he was willing to die for me, again and again."

Elladan looked at him wistfully. "Ah, Estel. When you are a King, something has to give. You cannot be everywhere and do everything. A broken leg, someone else can always fix. But fighting the black breath on a wound or running a kingdom, only you have the right and responsibility to do. Delegate for all else, brother. Impose upon people, trust them to do what they have to in your stead. That is your job, now. But don't listen to me." He nodded at the blond elf on the bed. "Ask someone who knows – for you are not the first King he's happily bled for, and not the only one who's had to set him aside for, objectively speaking, more important things."

Aragorn looked down at Legolas, whose brows had furrowed and whose pulse was speeding up. He would wake soon, with pain to greet him but also a salve – the presence of a good friend.

Elladan was right though, Aragorn had to concede. Legolas, as the warrior-son of the Elvenking Thranduil, was not likely to begrudge Aragorn's kingly preoccupations. The wood-elf prince must have been shunned by his own father in favor of duty at one point or another, with their home as frequently under attack as it was. But he grew up kind-hearted, apparently never lacking for love and laughter in his life in spite of it all.

"He has a generous spirit," Aragorn said. "But he shouldn't always be so willing to step aside."

"He is arrogant, that's what he is," Elladan said good-naturedly. "He always seems to think he can handle it. Thankfully – most of the time he is right." He pats at the wood-elf's head gently, before making his way toward the exit. "I am assuming you intend to stay here a while and continue to castigate yourself."

"That is part of the plan, yes," said Aragorn wryly.

"No use having the both of us lose sleep," Elladan said, as he stretched his arms over his head and indulged in an exaggerated yawn. "When he wakes, give him the tea I've prepared by his bed. It need not be warm to have effect. There are supplies for the steeping of athelas if you are so inclined; it should ease his pain, and might calm your mind if you are busy doing something. And finally – Elrohir takes his turn in three hours. Let him take it, and get what sleep you can."

Aragorn opened his mouth to protest, but the elf shook his head insistently.

"You will have a long day of working ahead of you, Aragorn," Elladan said sternly. "Do what you need to do for Legolas in the time that you have, but yield the watch to our brother when he arrives. You need rest, so that you can do your real job properly."

Aragorn sighed impatiently. "Everyone says I am King and yet everyone tells me what to do."

"It is ironic, isn't it?" Elladan agreed cheerfully.

Aragorn hissed at him.

"That is one way of looking at it, I admit," the elf said, more seriously and contritely. "But I must contend – it is in your willingness to serve and sacrifice that you are a good King and not just a King, Estel."

"I never felt reservations sacrificing myself," Aragorn said. "I just did not think I would be sacrificing my friends."

Elladan left him with a gentle pat to his head, much like he had done with Legolas. It always made Aragorn feel like an irate child and that was part of the affectionate joke, so he ducked it half-heartedly and swatted at Elladan, but ultimately received it gladly. The elf laughed at Aragorn's antics as he walked away and left the adan in Legolas' chambers.

His brother's quiet, musical laughter was a comforting sound, and it eased Aragorn's nerves, allowing him to focus on more productive things.

He squeezed Legolas' hand reassuringly before releasing it. He stood up and decided to work on the athelas before Legolas woke, so that its soothing scent could cloud the room and stave off even a little bit of the pains the wood-elf was expected to rouse to.

Aragorn missed it, working with his deft hands. He'd always been good with them, whether he fought or healed or did mundane things in between. In no time at all, the scent of kingsfoil graced the air, just as Legolas began to stir.

Unfortunately for the wood-elf, stirring meant pain, even if done minutely. His handsome face crumpled, his breathing became ragged, and a low whimper hummed from beneath his curled, grimaced mouth.

Aragorn shot forward with Elladan's concoction, and lifted up his good friend's head so that he may drink. Legolas shook but did as he was bid mindlessly, lost in misery but swallowing by instinct. When he finished, Aragorn lowered his head back against the pillows, and wiped at the liquid that had dribbled down the elf's chin and neck.

He let the medicine kick in and for Legolas to recover his senses before engaging him in conversation. Aragorn instead reclaimed his seat, soaked a cloth in athelas-infused water, wrung it out, and began to wipe Legolas' face and neck with it.

The wood-elf's eyes were open and watching Aragorn when he next lifted his gaze from the task. Legolas smiled at him, tremulously because he was still weak and in pain, but warmly.

"One would think," he said hoarsely, "that the King has far better things to do than this."

His voice was broken and gravely, even after he had taken drink. Aragorn suspected today's surgery had come with some deserved screaming, and the thought of it made him wince. His heart ached.

"How long did you really expect the conspiracy of silence around your condition to last, _mellon-nin_?" Aragorn teased. "I was bound to find out."

"You had... a lot to do," Legolas replied with a pained grunt that accompanied an attempt to shrug, "You _have_ a lot t-to do."

"I would have made time for you," Aragorn said fervently.

"I did not... want you to," Legolas said. "It would not have been right. A b-broken bone, anyone with t-training can set. To run a Kingdom and make early decisions that would have a b-bearing on its future? That is Elessar's t-t-task alone, and it is not an enviable one."

"You didn't even give me a chance to decide for myself," Aragorn pointed out. "Or at least to speak to you beforehand, or, or even just to wait for word and pray. Something. Anything."

"The only thing you... would have b-been really useful for," Legolas said with a soft, breathy laugh, "was holding... G-Gimli's hand or perhaps better, sitting on him. He was very anxious."

Aragorn stared at him for a moment and looked away. He drummed his fingers against the side of Legolas' bed, near the elf's forearm.

"He had every right to be worried," Aragorn pointed out. "This injury of yours has at no point proven to be as straightforward as you make it out to be."

"Mmmhmm," Legolas mumbled dismissively, beginning to drift. He closed his eyes before letting out a low moan of pleasure. His grin widened as the medicine began to take quick effect.

"Ah, Elladan's been, hasn't he? He did not scrimp on this one." He opened his eyes suddenly in alarm, and lifted his head to look at his leg. "It must be _baaad_. Is it even still there?"

Aragorn shook his head at the wood-elf in amused dismay. "You will have a long recovery ahead, but barring any further setbacks, you should get there in good time. So yes, _mellon-nin_. The limb is definitely still there."

Legolas lowered his head back to his pillows and whistled. "Well this is a relief! Elrohir is far more sparse about these medicines. He does not like giving me too much. He says some sense of pain helps him diagnose and treat. He says I can handle it and it would help me learn how far I should and should not push myself. What he does not say, but I find perhaps closer to the truth, is that he thinks I talk too much when I am like this."

Aragorn found it in himself to chuckle. "I can see why he would believe that."

Legolas rubbed at his face, and Aragorn watched as he tried to center himself and find lucidity. He sighed. "I suppose all the hopes I harbored about healing quickly and going back to the Woodland to help _adar_ should be tossed out the window."

"The battles there are ended definitively by now, _mellon_," said Aragorn gently. "And you may have wrung promises of silence from half of Gondor, but even with all your charm you will be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to plant you on a horse in this state."

"I hope that is not a challenge," Legolas drawled.

"I will make it a law if I have to," Aragorn joked. "Do not make it one of the first things I sign into legislation."

"It would be most amusing," Legolas said good-naturedly, "for future generations to read about the deeds of your life, and find my imprisonment here amongst the earliest accomplishments of your glorious reign." He turned serious quickly though, perhaps in memory of another glorious King. His brows furrowed in worry. "Have you any more word about home? About my father?"

"The Elvenking has sent no formal missives yet," replied Aragorn, "But by all intelligence indications, he is alive and victorious."

"Have you sent him word about me?" Legolas asked after a beat.

"Word went out to all Free Peoples that Sauron is fallen," Aragorn replied, "And I made special note to your adar of your contributions – but also your condition."

"Bah," Legolas said in dissatisfaction. "This is why you are never included in conspiracies of silence."

"You might not recall much of it but you were doing poorly once we got to Cormallen from the Morannon," said Aragorn.

He himself still carried bad memories of it.

_The Prince, unable to ride horseback in his state, rode with the honored ringbearers Frodo and Sam in Gondor's best convalescent wagon. They had Gimli, Pippin and a vigilant healer to keep them company. The vehicle was flanked by the sons of Elrond on their mighty steeds, and the twins would make room for Aragorn to ride alongside on his horse on the rare occasions he could extricate himself from his duties. Work still pressed upon him, even on the short journey._

_Legolas was sitting up with his legs stretched out before him. Though he was pale, in a cold sweat and had a white-knuckled grip on the sides of the wagon as it bumped along and jostled his injury, he started off in good spirits, exchanging quiet jokes with his friends._

_As the journey continued, the hobbits fell into sleep, still exhausted from their travails. Legolas on the other hand, was restless with pain and refused to lie down, saying it made him feel ill. He slumped heavily against the sides of the vehicle miserably, and clawed at its grooves and ridges with every bump and turn on the rugged roads. _

_"We are almost there," Gimli would assure him. Aragorn heard it repeatedly in the short times he was with them, and he was sure it was said even more times when he was away._

_Elladan and Elrohir kept glancing at each other worriedly as Legolas went from pleasant to surly, then irate, before devolving into a silent, glaring elf hunched in on himself and his miseries. He looked like a wild animal cornered and hurting, and the air about him pulsated with that brand of dangerous despair._  
When Aragorn freed himself from duties and managed to join them for one of the legs of the journey, he checked in on his companions and was alarmed to find the wood-elf in such a state.

_The twins called him in to a hushed discussion on just how much more their friend could possibly bear before falling into harm, and about the prudence of stopping and making camp on unsecured roads._

_The previously lethally quiet wood-elf caught the conversation and snapped, "Good gods, no!" His voice was edged and shaking, but adamant. "One more inquiry about whether or not I can continue on and I swear I will scream!"_

_The sleeping hobbits stirred at the aggressive tone, and he looked contrite at disturbing the heroes. He shook his head at himself in dismay._

_"Let us just get this over with promptly," he said more quietly, imploring Aragorn in particular, "_Please_."_

_If Legolas regretted his insistence later, he did not say. But they reached the camp established at Cormallen without stopping at the unvetted, unsecured points along the way._

_By nightfall though, Legolas' fever spiked and he was in such pain he was half out of his mind. Aragorn could hear his occasional sputtering rants in Sindarin, even if the Prince's tent was a good distance from Aragorn's, where he was trying to work. _

_The sound was muffled and broken and no one else seemed bothered by it, especially as other injured soldiers were moaning in their own agonies. But the Sindarin stood out to Aragorn, and it worried him to distraction. He could not properly register all other concerns thrown his way. He could barely hear anything beyond Legolas' occasional cries. _

_His secretary took mercy on the distracted King and the ministers and generals vying for his attention, and arranged for Aragorn to have time with which to rest and look upon his ailing friend. He practically ran out of there._

_What he found in Legolas' tent offered him no comfort. He was in bed, fevered, panting. But at least he was in good company for Elladan, Elrohir and Gimli were there, and he himself was in some version of decent humor._

_Legolas' eyes were shut and he was hissing in pain while his hands snaked toward his injured leg. He clutched tightly at the top of it. He paused suddenly though, as if in notice of something. One eye opened, and then the other, and they both settled tiredly on the new arrival among them. Aragorn watched, almost as if in slow motion, how Legolas attempted to school his features and control his trembling body._

_"Oh hello there, Estel!" the elf said, looking embarrassed but genuinely pleased. The ruse did not last long, and he looked away as his face crumpled. By silent agreement, no one stood there to give him some sense of privacy._

_Aragorn reached forward and placed a hand on Legolas' forehead He winced at its warmth. "Infection?"_

_"Yes," Elladan said in resignation. "The ailment and the fever are under control. The pain is not."_

_Legolas' head tossed from side to side, throwing off Estel's sympathetic touch. He growled in displeasure and sucked in breaths through clenched teeth. He struggled to regain some of his control, and found more of his humor along with it._

_"I've been stabbed, shot and poisoned," he choked out a half-sob, half-laugh. "But here is that singular misery... of a broken leg."_

_"Give yourself some credit," Elrohir pointed out, "The infection is probably eating at your bones after all."_

_Legolas shuddered at the horrible imagery of that but snorted at him. "Were you thinking of becoming..." he groaned, "... a professional healer of c-compassion... now that it is a time of p-p-peace? You need... you need some work."_

_Legolas soon fell into merciful, drugged sleep and Aragorn was able to leave the tent shortly afterwards. _

_The next time Aragorn saw the elf he was doing much better, and Legolas continued to improve until Aragorn felt comfortable enough to depart Cormallen for Minas Tirith. Legolas still had to travel in the wagon, but at the gates during Aragorn's crowning, he was somehow on his feet..._

"I had to tell him," Aragorn said simply, "you were very unwell."

Letters to other kingdoms was only one of the thousand or so things Aragorn had to do that tore him from Legolas' side on the Field of Cormallen. But with his brothers' assurances that the wood-elf was ill and pained but not in danger and improving by the day, he found he could tend to other concerns again.

A few days later, when he saw Legolas somehow rising to see him crowned, he hung onto the reassuring image as a sign that things were finally well. He was wrong, he realized now, and regretted that he had blindly depended upon that image of false assurance.

Legolas gave Aragorn a sleepy, cheeky grin. "Ah but _mellon_... when I am doing poorly, that is precisely when you must not say anything to Thranduil."

"Let us just say," Aragorn replied, "it was wise to avoid a diplomatic incident with the Elvenking so soon after we ended one war, eh?"

"A few days as King and you have become a changed bore!" Legolas teased.

A sadness crossed Aragorn's eyes before he could stifle it. The elf, long versed in Aragorn's occasional melancholy, caught it even in his drugged state.

"I did not mean to offend," Legolas said quickly, and he blinked and blinked at his eyes in a bid to be more lucid. "I tease only, Estel. If I've hurt you I am sorry."

Aragorn tried to change the subject. "You should not have delayed treatment, Legolas," he said tersely. "That proved unwise. And you should not have forced yourself to your feet when we got here, so soon after suffering an infection. Now look at where you are."

"If I can rise when I have to relieve myself," said the elf wryly, "I certainly was not going to miss you getting that well-deserved crown on your head." He winced, for his pains while dulled were still giving him flashing, random reminders. Bursts of flame ran through his veins, spurred on by unknown movements. He gasped, but ignored them in favor of focusing on his friend. He tilted his head at Aragorn thoughtfully. "What is on that beleaguered mind, _mellon-nin_? Why is the victorious King so miserable?"

Aragorn shook his head to dismiss the line of questioning.

"Aragorn," Legolas insisted, "What is the matter?"

"I've had this job but a few weeks, and have officially worn this crown just these last handful of days," Aragorn finally replied. "I did not understand the changes such a single word, 'King,' entails. It is a stranger this person, the opposite of who I was. I walk around escorted in my own House when I used to roam the Earth freely. We have guards at our bedroom doors, as if we were not sent to Mt. Doom on a harebrained scheme but months before. I've neglected my friends and they keep secrets from me, as if I was not once – nay, days ago - part of a Fellowship that had us going up against the world having no one but each other."

"And yet somehow you've also raised an army," Legolas told him with an indulgent smile, "lifted a curse, defeated evil, called back to life the soul-stained half-dead, fed a city... should I go on? One would think someone like you can miss on this one heroism of saving a broken leg."

"It's not a broken leg," Aragorn said, "It's _your_ broken leg."

Legolas shook his head at Aragorn in amusement. "I am heart-warmed, Estel, I truly am. And I am now and always will be, grateful for your attention. But one would think you have better things to do." He paused and shifted uncomfortably, but the movement caused him to blanch. He gasped and his eyes watered.

"I should have made time for a good friend in need," Aragorn said tightly.

"I think we're long past measuring friendship with time," Legolas told him through grit teeth. "Just because you could not give it, does not mean anything more or less of your caring."

"I should have been with you."

"You were," Legolas insisted, "You were with me because I was with you." He was tiring, but Aragorn looked confused and unconvinced so he pressed on. "I will say something likely to dent that ego of yours."

"Ego!"

"Ah, Estel," Legolas said with a choked half-laugh. "Your compassion, generosity and sense of responsibility, admirable as they are, have that one inextricable flaw. You think you are needed everywhere. You are right in some respects but did you not think of the converse? That you are the friend in need?  
"You are the one who needs us at this junction of things," Legolas continued breathlessly, "and in sparing you all of this, I and the rest of our friends were the ones helping you. We all around you, from the guards in your house and at your doors, to the healers who see to me in lieu of your kingly hands, to your friends who keep secrets... we help you do your job. You need us."

"You help me by suffering in silence?"

"We freed your time, your gifted hands and your mind," Legolas whispered, "so that you can do all the great things you are meant to do. This is a different world, _mellon-nin_. The demands of us are changed too – both as its servants, and as friends to each other."

He clenched his eyes shut, and his white-knuckled right hand slammed repeatedly at the bed against his side as his pain began to escalate again. The action prompted Aragorn to reach for it in a bid to offer comfort. The back of the elf's hand was bruised and Aragorn guessed Legolas had been hitting things to relieve his miseries. When Aragorn opened the other's hand, there were small marks on Legolas' palms showing where he had fisted so tightly his nails had cut skin.

Legolas growled in pain and his hand spasmed against Aragorn's. The King's closed around it, and they rode wave after wave of persistent pain together.

"I am with you," Aragorn kept assuring him, until he started to drift toward sleep.

"No fool," Legolas muttered, "_I_ am with _you_."

**THE END**  
March 2, 2019


	3. 3: Side by Side

**Hello everyone :)**

First off, thanks to all who read, followed, favorite-ed and especially all who reviewed the previous installment. PMs headed your way as soon as RL lets me breathe a little. This and several other pieces for this series have been finished for some time now but I've been holding off on posting in the hopes that I can do review replies first. Unfortunately my schedule has been kicking my butt lately :( I apologize, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all and assure you that every. single. review. counts and is cherished. Thank you for your time and I hope you let me know what you think of the next installment too.

Second, an editorial note - these stories will not be posted in chronological order. I write and post them as they come to me, and each one is written to stand on its own so the timing is not that important. So far they are all connected by a broken leg though, which is kind of ironic, lol. This happened by incident rather than design and may or may not continue as I move forward.

At any rate, without further ado:

* * *

**"Side by Side"**  
_Across a sea of soldiers, Gimli seeks only one. Legolas is missing after the Battle at the Black Gate, and an increasingly ornery dwarf refuses to declare victory until his elf is found safe._

* * *

_# # #_

_The Morannon_  
_Third Age 3019_  
# # #

Six thousand soldiers fought for the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, rallying under the banners of great leaders like Aragorn of Gondor, Eomer of Rohan, and Gandalf the Grey.

Six thousand stood bravely before the Black Gates, facing almost certain death against a fighting force ten times stronger and infinitely crueler, made up of orcs, trolls, goblins and barbarians, led by the dreaded Nazgul, under the eye of their evil master.

Six thousand.

It had seemed so small and paltry, then.

_What were we thinking?_

Gimli Son of Gloin knew he was going to die. He had an intimate knowledge of it, _knowledge_. It was a conclusion borne not of hopelessness, nor distrust in the capability of his friends and allies (_even the surprisingly serviceable elf_). It was just a calculation founded on pragmatism.

_"I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with an elf," he had grumbled on the eve of battle._

_Legolas Greenleaf had known it too, for he did not challenge the expected outcome, only his companion's perceptions of it._

_"What about side by side with a friend?" the woof-elf had countered, with a gleam in his eye softened by his gentle smile._

_"Aye," Gimli answered gravely, meaning it with all of his warm, stout heart, "I can do that."_

Except Gimli did not die, did he? Against all odds they won, and all the mad things they had hoped for somehow, someway, managed to come to light. It was a magnificent victory.

Now if he could only just find the blasted pointy ear.

"Side by side my arse," Gimli muttered as he walked amongst the bodies and detritus of battle. If the elf had stayed beside him as he had promised (_for Legolas had offered it freely, had he not, and not been compelled by me?_), he would know where the elf was, now wouldn't he? He, Gimli son of Gloin, really should have known better than to count upon the steadfastness of a faithless spawn of Thranduil-

"He had meant it figuratively," Gimli corrected himself, for he suddenly could not bear the thought of even the barest slander against his friend in that moment, could not find it in himself to think ill of Legolas when he could very well be cold, hurting, waiting amongst-

"Disloyal!" Gimli hissed instead, deciding he could and would disparage the elf as much as he wanted to after all. Because the elf could handle it. Because he was likely safe somewhere, waiting for Gimli, warm and unharmed and likely to imperviously ask – _Where have you been all these hours?_

"Looking for you!" Gimli growled, and this part of his imagined half-conversations finally earned the ear, attention, and raised eyebrow of the new King of Rohan. Eomer was a few paces from him, also walking amongst the bodies strewn on the ground.

It was a gruesome task they and a few dozen other soldiers had set themselves to. The dead, whether they were friend or foe, were to be left where they fell for the moment. The priority was to find, evacuate and tend injured comrades who had fallen on the field.

It was a task not for the faint of heart, nor was it for the unskilled. Bodies littered the ground, scores of them in various grievous and grotesque states. But it was also dangerous because not all the enemies were dead, and some of their ailing allies could be delirious and combative in their agonies. Enemies sometimes pretended to be dead too so that they would be left alone to crawl into escape in the cover of darkness. They were also not averse to harming the victorious soldiers checking amongst the dead – sometimes, their hatred was so strong that the very last of their failing strength would be expended trying to kill these soldiers of the West.

Gimli himself had to execute more than a few orcs who, despite their unquestionable defeat and grave ills, still tried to trip, stab, or hurt him in any way they were able while lying on the ground.

Living non-humans would be granted the mercy of a quick execution. Living enemies who belonged amongst the race of men had a better chance of surviving the battle. If they outright surrendered as prisoners of war and no longer presented any threat, they would be disarmed and secured – but not yet evacuated. They would be left on the field until all the injured allies were cared for first. Elessar wanted no unnecessary risk to any of the West's soldiers now that they have attained victory.

Some of these enemies will die on the ground waiting to be taken prisoner, the same way some allies will die waiting for help. Some will die anyway, even if help reached them promptly. It was just... what it was.

_A gruesome task indeed_, Gimli reflected. But the soldiers who had taken on the duty here, like himself and Eomer, were there not solely out of responsibility. Most of them were looking for fallen friends.

_Six thousand_, he thought again, dispassionately. It had seemed so small. Now it felt astronomical, insurmountable – as body after body after body he searched, and none of them was the only one he sought.

"King Eomer!" a breathless, high-pitched cry rang across the battlefield. The sound was sharp over the otherwise low hum of pained moaning and carrion's wings flying overhead.

"Lord Gimli!" cried the same voice, and the dwarf's blood ran cold in realization of what this could be about; they had sent out a bulletin in search of Legolas hours ago.

Eomer raised a royal hand to hail the screaming young Gondorian forward, and walked to meet him halfway. Gimli followed anxiously.

The boy, excited at finding his quarry, ran in their direction and almost stumbled and fell, if not for Eomer's quick reflexes. The King was quick to right the child and plant him on his feet.

"Keep your head, boy," he exclaimed, "This is no place for the reckless!"

But a battlefield was place enough for a child, Gimli noted, for Eomer had not argued the youth's presence here, only his mindlessness. He wondered if the people of Rohan even thought in these terms anymore, or if their circumstances have long forced them to disregard age in soldiering.

_Most have seen too many winters_, he remembered of the remnant, ragged forces that had made a stand at Helm's Deep – _Or too few_, as one missing blonde had added.

The boy, unperturbed by the rebuke, spoke even before he could catch his breath. "The elf prince is found, my lords."

"Alive?" Gimli demanded.

"Very much so."

Gimli felt tall all of a sudden. Unburdened, straightened out, finally truly victorious. His chest swelled. The air cleared. The scene brightened-

_Wait._

"And he has sent you to seek us but would not do so himself?" asked Gimli. "Injury?"

"The leg is bad but he should be able to keep it," said the boy.

Gimli took a deep breath. That did not sound so bad. It was infinitely better than dead or missing or maimed.

"Who is with him?" asked Gimli, "Is he in Aragorn's company?"

"He is alone, master dwarf."

"Where?" Eomer asked, even as whistled for one of his subordinates to come forward.

The boy pointed to an aid station southwest of the main battlefield. It looked small and distant, and Gimli was reminded how far he had walked amongst the dead and dying in search of his companion.

"He is awaiting his turn at treatment."

"That fool elf has never waited for anything all his life!" Gimli scoffed, knowingly unfairly. "Waiting!"

"He refuses to pull rank and go ahead," replied the precocious Gondorian. "But perhaps you can prevail upon him to change his mind, my lords. He is making all of the healers nervous."

Gimli snorted, "And what makes you think he would start listening to me now?" But he turned in the direction of the aid station and stared hurriedly walking that way anyway, trailed by the boy.

Gimli heard Eomer leave instructions with his subordinate in the field before following after him. The dwarf was mildly surprised that the King of Rohan was willing to eschew duty here to accompany him to the elf, but shrugged it off. Legolas could be that was sometimes – he acquired friends like he landed kills. That is to say, stealthily and overwhelmingly well. His own friendship with the elf had certainly snuck up on him...

The King of Rohan had wide, powerful strides that quickly paced him, and Gimli had the distinct sense that Eomer, like a horse hungry for ground, was just restraining himself from going as fast as he could on account of Gimli's comparatively heavier gait.

"Oh for the love of the gods," Gimli muttered, "Go ahead of me if you are able, Eomer, and be quick about it. One can only leave that wood-elf to his own devices for so long!"

Eomer gave him a wry grin but otherwise passed him by swiftly and wordlessly. The boy kept pace with the dwarf.

"A name, child?" Gimli asked.

"I am Pedron, master dwarf."

"You Pedron, will now speak to me of what I can expect to find. He is awake and insufferable I presume?"

"Yes," Pedron replied before he caught himself. "That is to say, yes he is awake but it is hardly my place to say anything of the insufferable bit, master dwarf."

"He is in good humor?"

The boy, not quite comprehending, hesitated. "If you mean to ask if he is being funny, the healer did not seem too happy with him...?"

"Is he in good spirits?" Gimli clarified impatiently.

"Yes," said Pedron, "and strong of will. He refused to be swayed on the matter of immediate treatment, even in pain. He insisted others needed aid more, and that he can stand to wait."

"He can tolerate more than most, that is true," Gimli conceded gruffly, "but hardly as much as he thinks. While I do not like what he is up to, I cannot deny him his principles. I will have to determine for myself. How did he look?"

"Cold and sickly," the boy said with a shrug. "And the misshapen leg is one to behold. It is disgusting, sir. But he is right in that he does look better than most of the other injured."

Gimli sighed. "Has Aragorn been told?"

"The king is ensconced with the wizard in the tent holding the honorable ringbearers, sir," came the reply. "No one would suffer my interference, not that the guards let anyone through. I left word, but they did not look too eager to take it for fact, nor disturb the process of healing for the words of an errand boy."

"They will let me through," said Gimli with certainty. "It is much more beneficial hat Aragorn knows about Legolas than that he does not, mark my word. Ah, perhaps I should do that first, if it is true what you say and that the elf is well enough to wait and is as tedious as ever. Lead to, boy."

"The King's tents are on the way, sir, but I did not say the elf prince was tedious!"

Gimli and the young Gondorian moved adroitly around bodies and the detritus of war, past the battlefield and to the safer but bustling camps. The King's encampment was marked by flags emblazoned with the White Tree and just as the boy said, well-guarded. Sentries blocked Gimli's way, to his profound irritation.

"If you mean to protect your king from me," he growled, "You are too late for he has been my companion long, and I've seen him buck naked relieving himself in the wilds. Furthermore, no sword nor spear will keep me from him at this juncture of things after everything we have been through, and I bear information he would happily kill for."

They let him through.

Gimli beamed at the gaping boy at his side and they moved forward into the enclosure. But as he walked toward Aragorn's tent, he felt a growing, heavy sensation in the air that sparked some doubt about his welcome.

Even in the chaos of post-battle, this area seemed far removed from sound, as if they were underwater. The air was heavier, laden, charged. It only became more so the closer he came to the King's tent, and it was near overwhelming by the time he parted the curtains and stepped inside.

The tent smelled of athelas, an herb Gimli had gotten used to on the quest and one that Aragorn wielded with particular authority. But more than that, the very air around them was thick, like a living thing thrumming. Aragorn was indeed, king and healer in more than name.

He was stooped over the pale, unmoving figures of those poor hobbits, Sam and Frodo, lying side by side on the bed. The two heroes resembled the dead more than the living. They looked like broken, well-used things, discarded by the cruel world at the end of their function.

_We have sucked the life out of you_, he thought mournfully.

But a King and a wizard were determined to hold them to the world they had saved, and they hunched in concentration over the little ones.

Suddenly, Gimli wondered if it was wise to intrude, or if he had assumed too much about his cachet with Aragorn and Gandalf. There was a kind of reverential magic in the air. It was the hallowed silence and bated breath that separated a prayer and its answer, as if the gods were looking at them and contemplating their fate. It was a taut, fragile moment, and Gimli likened it to a small flame bending and twisting in the wind, about to be either blown out or due to straighten, endure, and burn all the brighter.

Gimli decided it was perhaps best to say his piece and be on his way. "The elf is found," he said without preamble.

At first, Aragorn did not respond or show even the barest of reactions. But something in the hallowed air changed, a ripple of warmth and light coursed through it.

_The flame twisted in the wind –_

"He is alive and well and the grief of all around him," Gimli added promptly. He did not know for certain just how well Legolas fared but he knew enough, just as he now knew what Aragorn needed to hear so that he could better focus on his job.

So that he could better focus on Frodo and Sam.

_\- that proverbial, flickering flame righted itself and burned all the brighter._

Gimli knew now that he never should have doubted his welcome here, or underestimated the importance of the information he bore for Aragorn. It eased his concerns for their final, unaccounted member. The room suddenly felt charged rather than weighty, re-energized, buoyed by Aragorn's love and relief.

He called the hobbits by their names, and Frodo and Sam stirred.

The King raised glassy, shining eyes up at Gimli at the same moment Gandalf looked up too, with a sharp gaze and a small but wicked, mischievous smile.

"You seem to have things well in order over here," said the dwarf gruffly, for their smiling faces and shimmering gazes were doing strange things to the beating of his heart. They were like drums in the caves and songs of the mountains, shaking the ground, carried by the wind, connecting everything in the music of life. He felt omnipresent. He felt incandescent. They had won the battle but this was victory. They succeeded and were alive. They were together.

This was victory, and it thrummed in his veins.

"I will leave you to all this," Gimli said, unable to find word to anything else. "I will see to the elf now."

He made an abrupt exit, trailed by Pedron, whose eyes and nose were running from having wept. Even the child understood he had seen and been touched by something extraordinary.

"That is our King," he said around a bewildered sniff.

"He looks a man like any other when he is nekkid I can assure you that," Gimli snapped, because he did not know what else to say and while he had a great love of Aragorn, he knew him in a less sublime form and certainly preferred it that way. The bark of laughter from behind them told him Aragorn had not only heard him, but was also still..._ himself_. Gimli smiled contentedly at the thought, and led the way toward the aid station where Legolas was.

They emerged from the King's environs as if waking from a dream or emerging from water, and the air snapped as if a spell had been broken. Suddenly there was noise and bustle again.

They made their way forward, and while neither were tall enough to see over the heads of hundreds of soldiers milling about, a few winding ways and countless bumps later, they arrived at their destination.

It was an altogether miserable place.

This aid station was one of several that was the first stop of many a soldier after the fighting, and a deluge of arrivals were met by harried healers at the entrance. It stank of bodies. The floor was slick, squelching and blood-muddied. On one side were the black-marked dead and dying soldiers, many of them comforted by comrades and friends while some were blank-eyed and alone. On another were the red-marked and barely-living, being treated urgently and hustled away. And on another, the yellow-marked conscious and painfully aware were biting back their whimpers and cries as they waited their turn at treatment with barely anything more than tea and a blanket for relief.

There were no comrades or well-wishers here, for there was little space and more attention was given to the worse ailing who needed it. Here, bodies of the injured were simply laid out beside each other in more or less neat, narrow lines as they waited their turn.

One of them was kept in the same general area but set slightly apart from the rest, in a space better than the others. He had his own little corner, and was the only one amongst the men who had his own low table topped with fresh white cloths, a bowl of water, and a cup and pot of fragrant tea.

Eomer was sitting on his haunches over a figure on the ground here, but the King of Rohan's powerful build obscured the view of who this was. They were clasping each other by the forearms as soldiers do, however, and Gimli could see by the long, beautiful white hands holding Eomer back that it was his misplaced elf.

He fell to his knees beside Eomer, but his position unfortunately gave him a surprise and singularly awful view of Legolas' misshapen leg. Now he was a seasoned warrior and not prone to squeamishness, but there was something particularly jarring about a closed wound with jagged points pressing against skin, about askew limbs in unnatural positions in a misery borne by an entirely conscious individual... it made his stomach turn. It looked wrong, it looked painful, and the closed wound allowed his imagination to run wild on thoughts of all the vile things likely going on in there. There was also something about bones that felt particularly deep and intimate.

He almost recoiled, except he felt Legolas' eyes were raking over him, examining him if he was well. He did not want the elf to see his discomfort over Legolas' injury. He swallowed thickly.

"It doesn't look too bad," the dwarf declared.

Legolas laughed softly.

"Our dear friend Eomer here," said the elf, "was just telling me they've mercifully put down horses for less."

Gimli looked disbelievingly at the King of Rohan, who grimaced.

"I was merely emphasizing the gravity of the situation," Eomer said tightly, "and imploring the prince to take the opportunities accorded him."

"But we have since agreed that as soldiers," and Legolas said the last word meaningfully to make sure Gimli knew that the reference included him, "We know others must come first. When resources and expertise are limited, the hands that tend me are hands that are taken away from someone who will die because of its absence." He released Eomer from his grip. "Including the hands of this King, which I must release for far better use than being idle here with me."

Eomer nodded and rose effortlessly to his feet. "Be well, Legolas. You fought beside my king in defense of my people; a generosity I will never be able to repay. That you feel the need to suffer here grieves me, but it only adds to my esteem of you. Have a care for yourself, and I will be by as work allows."

He made to leave, then spotting the young Gondorian boy standing nearby, paused in thought and took him along too. Pedron had an intelligent, eager face that seemed perpetually ripe for some sort of task or recruitment.

Gimli watched them go before huffing in disapproval. But he sat on his rump on the ground beside the ailing elf in deference to his wishes anyway. He watched as relief dawned on Legolas' face at Gimli's grudging acquiescence, before he set his jaws, closed his eyes and turned his head away from the dwarf. He faced instead, the tent wall where there was nobody. Gimli allowed him a long moment to be miserable and waited quietly as he re-constructed himself.  
The angle, however, let Gimli see something that he did not like. The side of Legolas' face going down the line or his jaw to his neck was battle-grimed, but the gray was broken by small streaks of white.

Where tears of pain had run.

It struck at the heart of the dwarf, and he let his eyes rake hungrily over the rest of his friend's form. Legolas' resemblance to Frodo and Sam's broken bodies was suddenly unmistakable and affecting – a battered thing discarded at the end of its usefulness. The elf shivered, and Gimli's heartache quickly turned into anger.

They'd gone up and down the bloody _Caradhras!_ together, and the elf was barely ruffled by the freeze. That he should suffer here at their hour of victory after all his contributions to their cause was an abomination he could not abide.

Gimli realized he had started growling under his breath when Legolas turned to him and looked up at him wryly, bleak humor lighting his pained, weary eyes.

"I am well enough, Elvellon."

Gimli pursed his lips and shook his head vehemently. "I cannot countenance your slow torture here after all that you'd given," he retorted, "You know how injustice vexes me!"

"You've seen what is out there my friend," Legolas said with a sigh. "Immediate help is required elsewhere. This is something we just have to live with, I'm afraid." He closed his eyes again. "Please do not argue with me anymore, Gimli. I won't make for good sport. The world spins."

It was not reassuring.

"Are you saying that because you really feel poorly," asked the dwarf, "or only just to get your way?"

"Hm... both?"

Gimli growled at him.

The elf, blasted pointy ear that he was, chuckled. But he kept his eyes closed, and he exhaled slowly and carefully. He still trembled, and his eyes were still moist.

And Gimli was still angry.

He reached impatiently for the pot on the side table, sniffed at the tea in it and poured some of the warm liquid upon the empty cup.

"This is medicine I presume?" he asked.

"I've already had some," the elf said, but he hesitated.

"You can have more?"

"Yes," he replied, "but it is not potent enough for my kin and I fear drink drinking too much would require me to relieve myself later and be presented with uh... logistical issues I would rather not ponder."

Gimli rolled his eyes at the elf. "If you are in pain, drink. We will find solutions to all other problems as they come."

The elf was apparently miserable enough to agree. Gimli tentatively held the cup toward his companion, uncertain how he wanted to go about it. But Legolas had a strong core, and he managed to raise himself up to one elbow and reach for the cup, barely borrowing momentum and hardly even moving his legs. Still, he blanched alarmingly, sweat beaded on his forehead and over his upper lip, and he downed the medicine in a single gulp and motioned for more, which Gimli quickly accommodated.

Legolas rested upon his back when he finished, wincing and again exhaling slowly. He turned his head away again and again, Gimli waited for whatever face the elf would be willing to show him. In the meantime, he settled in and slowly found his own weariness. Sitting down after a battle was tricky business; once upon settling one's rump on the ground, once the day was won, it was hard to get back up. He let his mind drift, but he started when a flurry of healers and new arrivals passed by near him and hit him on the back. Legolas was given his own space here, but quarters were still very much tight. They left with hurried apologies, and Gimli began drifting again until again, he was hit. He jolted and rubbed at his face sleepily.

"You are in the way, _mellon-nin_," Legolas said breathily, finally turning to face him. The elf had composed his expression and the heavier dose of medicine was likely at work, but from their proximity, Gimli could steel feel the tight way he held his body.

"I am beginning to gather more bruises here than Helm's Deep, the Pelennor and the Morannon put together," he agreed gruffly, recalling that this section of the aid station allowed for no companions for the ailing, and they were already receiving a special concession by being together.

"I need not be waited on hand and foot, you know," Legolas told him gently. "Besides – what will your father say?"

Gimli snorted. "Yes but what will your father say, eh? Flat on your back with only Gimli Gloin's son for aid and friendship, this after he had thrown my father in the dungeons – ha! Oh the gratitude will infuriate Thranduil. My father will be delighted."

_If he is alive._

Mention of their distant families set a pall over them.

"I thought I would be headed home immediately after this," Legolas said quietly. "A hope I would have to quash now."

Gimli glanced at the leg and found a new angle with which to tempt the elf. "Ah but if you are treated expeditiously, you will certainly heal sooner and be on your way home sooner, won't you?"

"Don't toy with me elvellon," Legolas said without heat. "I know my limits-"

Gimli barked out a laugh that the elf ignored.

"- this is an injury meant for weeks of convalescence," he continued. "The length of time with which I would have to wait before I can safely ride a horse is already the time it takes to go from here to the Woodland and back and back again. This," he motioned dispassionately at the injury, "ends the war for me."

"At least it came now rather than earlier," Gimli pointed out.

"There is that," Legolas agreed.

Gimli was jostled by a few passers-by again.

"I mean it Gimli," said the elf, "I am well enough on my own here. Find rest and refreshment elsewhere. It will be good for the healers trying to maneuver around you – you are hunched like a boulder in a rushing river there. It will also be good for you as well, my friend. I am sure you are exhausted. Likely hungry..."

Gimli ignored the temptation (though his stomach did grumble in response at the thought) for he was resolute. "I've given in to your stubborn demand and you will give me this. Besides if they hit me sitting here, what makes you think you would be spared? You're pale as the sheets and look like a discarded pile of cloths. No one would even know there's an elf hiding in there. Someone might step on your leg!"

Remembering this himself, Gimli scooted a little bit downward, so that his body could shield the limb from the apparent dangers of passers-by. He would guard it with his life, they both knew it.

Legolas, smiling, reached for his arm and tugged at him.

"I won't change my mind-!"

"Lie next to me," Legolas coaxed. "It will be more restful for you, and we will keep to the lines the healers have made of the injured here. You will be less in their way."

Grumbling, the dwarf shuffled to do as instructed, but he still kept his body between Legolas' injury and the world. Thus did elf and dwarf lay on the ground together, Gimli's head reaching up past Legolas' elbow, their arms brushing.

"That's not so bad now, is it?" Legolas asked.

_Side by side with a friend_, Gimli's mind echoed in reply.

"Aye," Gimli agreed, shuffling to make himself even more comfortable, but careful not to touch Legolas' hurts.

"Aye," he said again, "I can do this."

**THE END**  
March 27, 2019


	4. 4: Weapons of War

**Hello friends!**

**First off, massive thanks to all who are hanging around with me in this series.** Thanks to all who read, followed, favorited and especially all who review. I can't reply personally yet - RL is a whirlwind I am not even sure what day it is at the moment! - but I cherish them in ways I cannot describe. They keep me sane basically hahaha, and responses will come in the next two weeks :) In the meantime, please feed the writer if you can. Your reviews point me in the right direction, fuel my imagination, and remind me I am not casting words out in the dark. If you can't that's all right - I just hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing :) Without further ado:

# # #  
**"Weapons of War"**  
_Sometimes, a healer first has to hurt._

# # #

_Minas Tirith_  
_After the Crowing of the King_  
# # #

Elrohir, son of Elrond, held the short, thick, buckled leather bands thoughtfully in his hands. It was malleable from having been weather-worn and well-used, and the interior was fur-lined for some semblance of softness... but he, as a healer and a soldier, had no doubt as to what they were used for.

They were going to use it to tie down the patient.

He was not surprised by this turn of events and had agreed to it earlier. Even now he understands its necessity. But holding the bindings in his hands and looking at the ailing elf who would be subject to its constraints twisted his stomach into knots.

Legolas was in bed, trembling slightly and caught in a cold sweat. His thin clothes clung to his slicked skin. His long, unbound, unkempt golden hair was stuck in clumps to the pillow, his face, his chest, as he restlessly tossed his head. His powerful archer's hands were pressed tightly around the top of his thigh, just above the debilitating injury that brought them all here in the first place. He clutched as if to stave of pain, as breaths sawed in and out of him through clenched teeth. He exuded danger, like a cornered animal. But his wide, dark-rimmed sleepless eyes – darting restlessly as he watched the bustle of people around him – reminded Elrohir of a nervous child.

The wood-elf's leg had been broken badly at the Morannon some weeks past, necessitating a surgery under battlefield conditions that had since jumped from complication to complication. He'd just weathered an agonizing infection. Now they had to deal with this – a malunion on the healing limb that they needed to re-break and set properly. It was hopefully the final hurt the wretched wood-elf would have to suffer over the injury – for did he not go unscathed through Mirkwood, Caradhras, Moria, Helm's Deep and the Pelennor, only to be felled by a broken leg in their hour of victory?

_You gotta give it to Legolas Thranduilion, though – when he does something, he really commits._

Elrohir gave out an aggrieved sigh, which caught Legolas' roving attention. The blue gaze found Elrohir, and he almost shoved the leather bindings behind his back to hide them in guilt.

_Almost_. He spared himself that indignity and instead, stepped forward. Legolas watched him approach, while Gondorian healers and apprentices walked and worked around them.

_A few hours ago, the room had been much different._

_It was quiet and near-empty, deferential to the miserable wood-elf at its center. Elrohir had similar chambers to this, but noticed that Legolas' bed was situated closer to the window; almost certainly at his loyal dwarf's bidding. The light, parted curtains stirred with a soft breeze, and Legolas' face was turned in that direction. His body was the most relaxed Elrohir had seen in days. It was neither tightly coiled in pain, nor tensed at anticipated agony that teased around his temporary drugged relief. But there was something disconcerting about it._

_Elrohir walked a little around the bed so he could have a better view of Legolas. His brother Elladan was in the room, examining the wood-elf's leg beside a Gondorian healer names Harunir. Gimli the Dwarf was nearby too, wringing his thick, usually useful hands, dissatisfied in their current inability to help and make things better._

_Elrohir's eyes finally found Legolas' face and he jolted slightly at the sight. The wood-elf's eyes, dark-rimmed from the constant pain that deprived him of much sleep, were open but not in peaceful elven dreams. He was awake and staring dreamily at something only he could see. His lips were parted in wonder._

_Legolas was, Elrohir realized, seeing the seductive promises of the sea. Over his agonies he'd found its call, and had settled on it._

_He felt a kick in his chest at some inexplicable pang of recognition and regret. But before he could surmise what it meant, his brother called his name out softly._

_Elrohir lifted his gaze to find Elladan giving him a jerk of the head in the direction of the exit. He nodded, and patted Gimli's shoulder as he passed, following Elladan and Harunir first out of the sleeping quarters, then even out of the Prince's anteroom and to the corridor beyond. They closed the door behind them._

_"He is not recovering as he should," Elladan opened. "This pace is slightly slow-going for a man and unheard of in an elf, and his pain is outsize. Do you think the sea-longing affects it in some way, brother?"_

_"I think it is currently more salvation rather than suffering," Elrohir said softly, remembering Legolas' far-off look. The sea was the last corner of escape, the last safe harbor-_

_And there, he found the source of its aching familiarity._

Naneth...

_Years ago, their tortured mother had the same pained tension drained from her body only by the prospect of sailing over sea._

_"I've seen this before," said Harunir. For a disconcerting moment Elrohir thought Harunir was also talking about the sea-longing, until the Gondorian healer elaborated further on Legolas' leg._

_Harunir was old for a human, with a weather-worn face and war-hardened eyes. He was advanced in years, but he took obvious care of his precious, experienced hands – they were painfully clean and almost unlined, strong and steady with long, powerful fingers. He gesticulated with them animatedly, as if it was his language and perhaps it was; Harunir was both the most senior healer of the city as well as the finest surgeon in the kingdom._

_"There is malunion on the limb," he said. "The bone is repairing itself – faster than I have ever seen on men, even in spite of his recent setback with infection - but misaligned. It is causing pain and damage not only upon itself but upon its surroundings."_

_"The previous surgeon made a mistake?" Elrohir could not help but ask with an edge in his voice - both in anger at the healer who may have erred, and in guilt at the thought that he should have been the one to help his friend. He, like Elladan, was classed as an expert healer and had been dispatched to more serious cases than a broken leg._

_"Possible but not likely," Harunir replied. "Circumstances have made experts of our bone-setters, my lord, and they take good care. That would have been especially the case in treating a foreign Prince. But he's also been moved countless times since, and I understand the pain and fever from the infection made him restless. The malunion could have began at any of these points from the time of the surgery to the time he arrived here."_

_"We've read of cases like this but have limited experience," said Elladan, with a confirming glance at his twin. "If I understand correctly, the proper course of action is to cut into him again, re-break and re-set the bone?"_

_Elrohir winced. It sounded like torture._

_"That is correct," Harunir confirmed. "We could do the procedure in the healing halls, all our wares are there. But wares could be moved easily enough, whereas moving him for the surgery will be aggravating for him. Furthermore, he must stay immobile for weeks, and very strictly this time. If he is moved there, there he must remain. I don't believe it would be in the Prince's best interest to be stuck in the wards. Do you concur?"_

_"It sounds wise," Elladan said, before turning to Elrohir expectantly. He nodded in agreement._

_"Arrangements will be made then," Harunir said. "The surgery will be done in the Prince's chambers – immediately."_

_"Can it not wait?" Elrohir asked. "The infection and the journey here had taken a lot out of him."_

_Harunir shook his head. "He is re-forming bone so quickly as is the norm for your kin, and this is currently to his detriment. This means that the longer we wait, the more set the bones will be. I prefer to re-break while they are not yet as hard. I wouldn't have to exert so much force, and I will have more control at chipping and cutting-"_

_Elrohir closed his eyes and corrected his earlier conclusion, This was not just torture, this was going to be _slow_ torture._

_"It will be torture," Elladan said aloud, voicing the brutal thought for them both._

_"Yes," Harunir conceded, "but a necessary one. Just as necessary – I will need your assistance in managing him."_

_"We can put him to sleep," Elrohir answered, "but an elf would have to be half-dead not to feel what you're planning to do. We can only give him so much, especially in his current state. He's gonna wake up at some point and he's going to be swinging."_

_"He would have to be physically restrained," said Harunir. "We have implements for that."_

_"You're not going to tie him up," Elladan said flatly._

_"His leg needs to be perfectly still," said Harunir. "So he will be bound at the ankles, knees and hips. But based on the danger he presents - like you, I do believe he will wake fighting - I will demand more. He will be in maddening pain, he won't be able to think straight, much less tell friend or foe. He will by instinct fight us, and you know as well as I do that even barehanded on his back, he is a weapon of war."_

_"We can hold him down," Elladan suggested, half-heartedly._

_"I cannot in good conscience ask my healers to treat him if I cannot guarantee their safety," Harunir said firmly. "We're no fighters, my lord, we won't stand a chance. And you will be too wary of hurting him to be very effective. I'm afraid I must insist."_

He did, and neither Elladan nor Elrohir could offer other satisfactory alternatives. They were already going to drug Legolas as heavily and strongly as they dared, and knew it might not be enough.

Elrohir came up beside Legolas' bed, almost contritely. He and Elladan had briefly considered putting the wood-elf to sleep first before tying him down, but they eventually agreed that it would have been worse to wake up to; better to let him know what to expect.

"I am s-sorry to ask," Legolas said, voice low and strained, "b-but if there is anything at all that I might take..."

"Just a bit more of a wait, _mellon-nin_," said Elrohir gently. He sat down by the wood-elf's hand, so that he did not look down upon him from so high a distance. "We will give you something far more potent, but we must let some of what you are already on wear off."

"For the surgery," Legolas said.

"Yes."

"That is f-for the surgery too," he nodded at the bindings Elrohir was fiddling with.

"You will be unconscious at the start," Elrohir explained. "You won't feel the cut, I can promise you that. But it will be slow-going from there, and you might wake partway through. It will be..."

_Excruciating._

"Uncomfortable," Elrohir said instead. "We can give you more medicine, but not until then. In the meantime, you uh, might be a danger to yourself or to others. You will fight us."

The wood-elf nodded. "Don't, don't let me hurt anyone, Elrohir."

The Imladris elf gave him a wry smile. "You are a handful, but I will try."

"And d-don't tell Aragorn," Legolas added quickly, "Not until everything is done and all is w-well. You know how, how he is. He can b-be so single-minded. He will worry to distraction and n-none of us need that."

"I bet you give your _adar_ the Elvenking the same grief," Elrohir teased.

"If you didn't," Legolas pointed out, "Then you are not doing your job as a proper lord's son."

Elrohir laughed instead of denying, and he patted the wood-elf's arm affectionately. The energy of the people around them shifted though, and Elrohir knew he would soon have to place the bindings at points all over his friend's body.

"You know the last one I held of these," Elrohir confided quietly, and his own trembling voice caught him by surprise. "I'd removed them from my mother's wrists. Now I am to place them on yours."

Legolas hurriedly engulfed Elrohir's laden hands with his own, and he clutched tightly at them, his own pains set aside for the moment.

"You're not hurting me, my friend," he assured the other earnestly. "You are healing me, and I am grateful." His lips turned up in a tremulous but undeniably wicked smile though, taking the edge off of the conversation and off of Elrohir's hesitant heart.

"But I will still take a swing at you."

Elrohir grinned. "You can try."

**THE END**  
April 12, 2019


	5. 5: Tireless

**hello friends!**

**Thanks to all who are with me on this fic, especially my kind, encouraging and insightful reviewers**. I am dying to respond to each one but I do not know what day it is. Seriously sadLOL I am so RL blitzed and what day is it? hahaha... But this little offering (and a few others) have been in the 'outbox' so to speak for a month so... let me just say thanks the way I know best until I can reply to everyone :) And that is, by posting :)

Thanks for keeping me sane and offering me the occasional community escape, you guys. I hope you find as much solace in the reading as I do in the writing and posting :) All the best and as always, C&Cs are welcome :) Without further ado:

# # #

**"Tireless"**  
_When 'the most tireless' member of the Fellowship finally sleeps, his friends realize he causes more trouble unconscious than he does awake_

# # #

_Minas Tirith_  
_After the Return of the King_

# # #

There is a heated argument outside the doors of the chambers assigned to the Prince of the Woodland Realm.

"It is improper," insisted, of all people, Peregrin Took.

"Improper!" retorted the dwarf with much offense and disbelief. "What is so disagreeable about taking an elf's measurements while he sleeps? I merely take my numbered tape against the length of his side - "

"It looks too much like what one does measuring - " Pippin lowered his voice at the word but maintained the urgency of his reasoning " – measuring the dead for their caskets! No, Gimli, it looks wrong. I cannot countenance it. Did I not tell you already? I've made my measurements, and right discreetly too. The height from Legolas' feet to the pits of his arms is six spans of my foot-"

"Your left or right foot, Pip?" asked the hobbit Meriadoc beside him, in a tone caught somewhere between earnest inquiry and slight editorial. "They differ slightly, as you know, and Gimli requires the utmost precision for what he means to do."

"Huh," said the Took, "I'd forgotten which one. I suppose I should do it again."

"Perhaps you should," encouraged Merry, "for I think you also overestimate the length of your feet to claim only six spans."

"I do not!" retorted Pippin, "Take that back, Merry!"

"What pray tell was the system of this estimation, young hobbit, hm?" demanded Gimli. "I do indeed require precision, thank you, Merry. Any work crafted by the children of Aule demand it, else what would my father say!"

"I just walked beside his bed from its foot and made my way up, counting as I went," Pippin replied proudly. "I did it a number of times too."

"How you could possibly believe that results in any semblance of accuracy escapes me!" Gimli retorted.

And Merry, ever pragmatic, asks – "Why don't we just ask him?"

He courts the ire of both sides. "It is supposed to be a surprise!" they both exclaim.

"What do you think, Sam?" Merry asks the gaping gardener, who had arrived at the argument long after it had become heated.

"I don't see what all the fuss is for honestly," he says uncertainly, "Am I mistaken or are we simply discussing crutches?"

Now he courted the ire of all three.

"There is nothing simple about-!"

"These are not just crutches, they are-!"

"It is a gift from us that-!"

Frodo smiled as he listened from the safe confines of Legolas' rooms. He had come here hoping for a quiet visit with the elven prince, but when he found their friends talking animatedly just outside the doors, he foisted Sam on them and snuck inside on his own. His friend, ever-loyal, gladly took the cudgels up for him again.

"Your friend is very brave," one of Lord Elrond of Rivendell's sons, Elladan, told him with a glint in his eye. "Even I would not venture out there when they are like that." He teased gently, "How you ever got anything done – much less one of the greatest, most difficult tasks in all the history of the world - is a delightful surprise to me."

"Myself as well," Frodo agreed quietly. He belatedly remembered to add a small smile, which made the dark-haired elf grin broadly, as if he had been rewarded.

Frodo saw it in Elladan's eyes, that slightly nervous, earnest desire to coax joy out of him that he has been seeing in a lot of people lately; ever since he and Samwise were rescued from Mt. Doom. He had to admit he felt thoroughly wrung-out, burned to the quick. But did he really still look so grave? It was a strange and counter-intuitive sensation, how he felt smothered by all the careful, measured metaphoric footsteps everyone was making around him. No sudden movements. No unwelcome touch. No careless tongues asking about the darkness that lingered in his heart.

He shuddered in remembrance and wondered if perhaps they were justified in their caution dealing with him. But he knew for himself at least, that he was battered but not broken.

_Which is more than I could say for poor Legolas' leg_, Frodo thought, glancing again at the complex contraption that immobilized the unconscious elven prince's limb before him.

It was, he'd heard, broken and horrifyingly had to be re-broken after it healed incorrectly. He had his own grievances about shattered bones, of course. After everything he had been through it was a surprisingly acute pain, the loss of the tip of his ring fing-

There is a reason for the words, "bone deep."

When his flesh was bitten the pain was sharp and immediate, but when the teeth gnawed to bone and it splintered with a savage, cracking crunch... the pain was profound, literally to the core of him. It was visceral and sickening. And even now in remembrance, the injury throbbed still, and it led to other reminders: blinding anger, borrowed strength, poison in the air and heat on his face, breath on his ear, defeat, death-

He shook his head and returned to where and when he was. Elladan was looking at him uncertainly, and he forced himself to think on other things.

_Phantom itches_, he decided, was a topic as good as any and a particularly absorbing issue for him as of late. The mind sometimes forgets what it had lost, and he thinks his lost fingertip itches but there is nothing there on his disfigured limb. Such a horrible nuisance, the literal itch that he could not scratch.

Sometimes it was the little things that drove one up the wall.

_At least Legolas wouldn't have to suffer that_, he thought_. As painful as it is, he will keep the leg at least_.

"He sleeps so deeply," Frodo observed. "Week after week after week we journeyed, and I realize I've never seen him truly at rest. He was the most tireless of us all."

"As the sole elf in your company," explained Elladan, "he understood his role well. With his endurance and keen senses, he knew he was relied upon for constant vigilance. Months of that takes its toll, however. He is catching up, I suppose."

"He is drugged to the gills, that is what he is."

The voice of the new arrival made Frodo jump, and Elladan's twin, Elrohir, caught the Ringbearer's surprised reaction and gave him a slight bow in apology.

Elladan rolled his eyes at his brother. "It does not render what I said untrue," he said. "Months of hypervigilance, Elrohir, months, on top of the battles he's had to fight. It would be a lot for anyone. After our victory at the Morannon, most of us felt we could sleep for a week but even he couldn't get that on account of the pain he endured from his leg. With the second, corrective procedure now behind him, he can finally, truly rest."

"You give too much," Elrohir contested. He walked to Legolas' side and lifted his eyelids, and then raised and dropped his limp hand. The elven prince did not stir.

"Wood-elves are exceptionally hardy," Elladan argued, reaching for the hand Elrohir had dropped and slipping it beneath the blankets. Again, the prince did not stir. "And by virtue of the constant warring in his lands and the injuries he'd previously suffered, he is used to medicines and therefore, has a higher threshold. He needs more to find some measure of relief."

"Weaning him off of them would be a pain," Elrohir insisted, "and it would hurt him more. In the long run, less is better."

"But we know to do it slowly and gently," Elladan argued, "He is undying, brother – he can very well take his time."

"You want to tell Thranduil that when you send back his only son half-asleep half the time-"

At the mention of the Elvenking's name, Legolas did stir a little, shifting his head from side to side and uttering a low moan.

"See?" Elladan said triumphantly, "not too much. Now he wakes hurting, and may need-"

"No - " Elrohir countered.

Frodo cleared his throat, and the sons of Elrond had the grace to look slightly ashamed. The hobbit gave them a helpless smile, and was relieved when they understood what he meant without him having to voice it. The brothers, both gifted healers trained by their father even if they sometimes disagreed, exited Legolas' rooms and continued their argument outside.

Legolas' eyes were still closed and he looked far from waking, but his brows were furrowed. Frodo reached for the elf's head with his good, unbandaged hand and pushed off stray golden strands that have been dislodged. The hobbit started humming a tune he knew Legolas liked. The elf had sung it for them many times along the road, and he himself had always found it soothing.

"Everyone is fighting," Strider – Aragorn – said from where he stood behind Frodo at the entrance to Legolas' sleeping quarters.

The former Ranger kept the light steps he'd acquired from his time with the elves. He surprised Frodo too, and made a strikingly identical, wordless apology to that which Elrohir had earlier issued. They really were brothers.

The King looked slightly bewildered, as he stepped into the room and took the vacant chair across from Frodo, on Legolas' other side.

"Who'd have thought it?" he remarked, "The wood-elf causes a greater ruckus asleep than awake."

Frodo chuckled softly. "I see now why he sleeps as little as possible."

Aragorn beamed at Frodo's laugh. He knew the stout heart of the hobbit well after journeying with him and calling him back to life, but that did not entirely exempt him from the nervousness with which most people now regarded Frodo's company.

"It is good to see you laughing and on your feet," Aragorn said.

"I wish I visited with him sooner," Frodo said apologetically, shifting in his seat. "But our journey here from the Cormallen had taken much out of Sam and me, and we were confined to bed when they took a knife to him that second time." He put a hand up to his head. He tired easily still, and the days melded together indistinguishably sometimes. "That was two days ago, I think?"

"I was not there for him then either," Aragorn said softly, and there was a quiet pain there that Frodo could not miss, even if the King masked it quickly.

"He had a rough time of it," Frodo said quietly. "Our rooms are a few doors from here and I was in a stupor, but I could have sworn I heard him through the walls..." his voice drifted off, for Aragorn's pain returned anew. The hobbit held off on saying, _screaming_.

"That information was not disclosed to me," Aragorn said, and Frodo realized he was not the only one around whom people now treaded lightly.

"I should not have said anything," Frodo told him. "I am sure what kept you was important, just as I am certain they would have summoned you if you could have done anything to help, Strider. We all know the burden you bear upon your shoulders, all the things that come with a world that needs rebuilding. Legolas knows."

Aragorn winced but nodded. He took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and forced a smile on his face. "The song you were humming, that is a favorite one of his. That you still know that little earworm now is a mark of one who has traveled much with this wood-elf."

"He always seemed awake," Frodo said fondly, "and even when he was asleep he was aware. I had... I had many a restless night, as you know. He was on watch most of the time and the sight of him guarding us and hearing him humming his song was always reassuring for me."

Frodo did not say – sometimes he jerked awake from foul dreams, or he would huddle miserably and try to sleep or pretend to be asleep until morning, plagued by noisy ill thoughts that tore through his mind in the quiet night. He knew Legolas knew whenever he was awake by that song. The elf would sing it low in his breath or hum it, a humble effort to keep Frodo's demons at bay and help an overburdened hobbit find some solace in the night, some sound that was not a whispering evil. It was a kindness he would never forget.

When he heard Legolas screaming through the walls two days ago, he resolved to be better quickly, and the first thing he did on his recovered strength in Minas Tirith was to walk here.

"The first time I traveled with him," Aragorn reminisced, "We were with the Rangers of the North. By the end of a season we all knew the song by heart. But we'd like to think we contributed something to his artistic education too."

"What might that be?" Frodo asked, his shoulders already quaking at an anticipated joke, for Strider when his eyes sparkled was genuinely infectious.

"A few dirty limericks."

Frodo laughed out loud, before putting a hand over his mouth to quiet himself. But it is this small and light but brilliant, crystal clear sound that cut past all the arguments outside until they ceased, and made Legolas' eyes flicker open at last.

It was a sound they'd all missed and have been waiting and working for.

First to break the spell was Sam. Never quite the fastest of the bunch, he was still first to run back into the room, huffing for his own body still battled weakness. Before he could catch his breath, he asked – "Master Frodo, are you all right?"

Frodo's face flushed in embarrassment, as one by one they all crowded an increasingly befuddled Legolas' room: Merry, who said, "See Pip? I told you he was laughing, not crying."

Pippin who defended himself, "Do not blame me, I've not heard it in awhile. It could have been anything!"

Gimli, who had the loudest voice of them all, berated them, "Hush young hobbits or you'll wake the poor elf!"

At the mention of Legolas, they all surrounded and looked down upon the elf on the bed. He was half-awake, and gazed at each of their faces with a mildly suspicious expression. One by one his gaze skimmed past them starting from Frodo on his left, all the way around until he got to Aragorn on his right. His eyes moved in a steady beat as if he was counting.

"As you can see," Aragorn, apparently reading his mind, told him with a guffaw - "Gandalf proved truly wisest amongst us and has spared himself all the mischief here."

Legolas' face broke into a slightly confused, but genuinely happy smile. He closed his eyes again and returned to sleep.

**THE END**  
March 28, 2019


	6. 6: Shadows

**hi everyone!**

thanks to all who are still with me on this series, and most especially all who review. My schedule is not loosening up, but this has been lingering around for a while so I thought I ought to post it already, even if I would prefer sending out reviewer responses first. I hope you don't mind - but please know that reviews are a salve, and do try to feed the author with one on your way out if you are able ;) C&Cs are always welcome :) If you are nit able, that;s all right too - I just hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you again and without further ado:

# # #

**"Shadows"**  
_In Gondor after the War of the Ring has been won, Legolas and Faramir find many things in common_

_# # #_

_Minas Tirith_  
_After the Return of the King_

_# # #_

The very moment the doors closed – the very second that sliver of light and the warmth of the fire from the rooms beyond were shut to him – he was alone, plunged into darkness, and out in the cold.

And yet his lips curled to a helpless smile.

Faramir, Steward or Gondor, put a hand over his thundering heart. It was suddenly loud in the sudden quiet, suddenly ungovernable, suddenly no longer his own. He wondered if she – the Lady Eowyn of Rohan with whom he had spent the evening walking and had just escorted back to her chambers – could hear his hammering heart from beyond the door. He wondered if she heard, and if she understood its newly learned language, the beats that stuttered and spelled out her name.

There was a weight, a shadow beyond the closed door, and he knew then that she still stood on the other side of it. What for he did not know and he dared not ponder, nor hope. For now, her proximity was enough. That she suffered his company in the walks they've been taking was enough. Even that she knew his name... it was enough.

The presence on the other side of the door stepped away. Her nimbus remained, however. Like the moon borrowing light from the sun, every encounter he had with her got him through the night and into the next time they met, the next bright new day.

A sound suddenly clattered in the empty hall, a hard, sturdy thing falling and echoing in the corridors. Faramir's nerves, which will perhaps always be raw from a lifetime of warring, jumped. And he dropped to a lowered stance that had all of his still-healing injuries protesting. He narrowed his eyes and let them adjust in the dim hallway.

At its other end, another being.

And Faramir wondered now at how he could have missed him. It was Legolas, the Prince of the Woodland Realm. His long, unbound golden hair was silvered by the moonlight streaming from the arched windows, and his thick, resplendent sleeping robes shimmered. His skin was pale too, and the overall effect of him standing there was that of either a spectral form or a marble statue. But he did not have the equanimity of a quiet passing ghost, or the formidable stillness of a sculpture. He looked all too breakable in the stance Faramir found him in, leaning heavily on the walls with his thickly casted left leg stretched out, while he attempted to squat and strain for fallen crutches on the ground. His face was crumpled in strain and chagrin, his right arm trembling slightly as he reached. Faramir shot forward, even as his own wounds smarted.

"Let me," he told the elf, who huffed impatiently at himself and straightened, while Faramir clutched at his own healing torso and leaned forward to retrieve the sturdy, well-crafted walking aids.

"Lord Faramir," Legolas said, delightedly though he also looked embarrassed.

"Prince Legolas," Faramir greeted as he picked up the crutches without incident, though he did have to restrain from grunting as he rose. He was healing and felt no pain, but it's been habit lately, as he learned to trust in the movements of his body again. The Steward held on to the walking aids for a moment while the prince leaned against the walls and caught his breath.

"Funny we should meet this way," Legolas said, "but it is good to see you again after all these weeks."

Faramir's brows furrowed and he tilted his head at the elf thoughtfully, wondering what he meant. Weeks ago they met each other in Gondor after the battle at the Pelennor Fields; Faramir had just been pulled from death's door and, while aching to go with the host of the West toward Mordor, unable to do so owing to his injuries. He'd met the efficient and affable elf several times in the company of the formidable Aragorn, and made their goodbyes when Legolas left with everyone else toward the Morannon. But they've certainly seen each other since.

When Aragorn was crowned as King upon returning victorious to the City, they were both there. Legolas, he remembered, was gray-faced, glassy-eyed and held between his loyal dwarf and one of Elrond's sons but he watched on with an intense focus and a sublime smile. And then a few days ago, Faramir had been hurriedly drafted into service to...

_Oh_, he realized, _Legolas remembers nothing._ Faramir on the other hand, couldn't quite forget...

_While he was officially on the convalescent list, Faramir's duties were restricted to very limited engagements during the day. He checked in with his Rangers and sat in on a few Council meetings in the morning. But he tended to tire by midday and he would return to his own chambers for some rest and paperwork before rising again in the evening for supper and the usual social engagements that went with it. He made himself available then, to be accosted by the City's nobles and the other high-ranking guests in Minas Tirith. Establishing rapport with high society made his actual work easier, but he took little pleasure in it until the evenings started to be graced by the presence of a fellow-convalescent – Eowyn of Rohan, whom he first met in the healing halls and whose company he enjoyed. She took the drudgery away from his daily schedule while he recovered his strength and his spirit in the days and weeks that followed the fall of Sauron._

_On an afternoon like any other, however, the monotony broke for a different reason. He was walking in the halls of the guest residences in the King's home, headed toward the solace of his own chambers, when he heard the sound._

_It was a low moan that sounded strange in the halls, as if it were wound into the minute crevices of rock, like lifeblood in the veins or the twisted roots crawling beneath the ground. It was dulled by the stone at its source, but echoed and so it sounded as if it came from everywhere. It was a ghostly sound, a sound made only by the remnants of a man. It made his skin crawl and he was not the only one, for more than one of the guards in the residence stood stiffly with a blanched face struggling to remain impassive._

_"What is that?" he could not help but ask._

_Before the soldier could answer, the low moan became a sharp cry, and then an outright, mindless, scream, broken only by a quick ragged breath, and then another scream._

_A hard thud against one of the doors along the hallway was Faramir's clue as to the source of the commotion. He walked quickly in that direction and pried the wooden door open. A bewildered-looking soldier, a Gondorian seconded to the Prince of the Woodland Realm, stumbled out. His nose was bleeding. He shoved away from Faramir and called on to the other guards in the hall for help._

_The chambers were in a state of chaos, and Faramir assessed the situation quickly, as only a commander well-versed in the mess of war could. Calculations ran through his mind at tremendous speeds, as his mind processed what his eyes were seeing._

_In the anteroom to the Prince's sleeping quarters, there was a hobbit with his back to Faramir, facing the room beyond. Peregrin Took, who had been his father's unlikely pet and his own unlikely savior, had a ready stance and a body tensed, about to spring forward at whatever he was seeing within. When Faramir saw the fray Pippin meant to join, however, he quickly yanked back the hobbit and pushed the little one behind him._

_He'd heard spectacular talk of the prowess of one Legolas of the Woodland Realm, but the elf's true danger struck him then. His golden hair haloed in disarray, his thin bed clothes stuck to his heaving, sweat-slick body... He was ill and unarmed, but there was still an unhappy dwarf stretched over his chest and hips trying to keep him down. Each of the elf prince's arms – one fisted the other clawed, both with bruised and cut wrists bearing strips of torn leather harnesses and both swinging – were also being pinned down by the identical sons of Elrond of Imladris. They were trying to speak to him in their language simultaneously, but to no apparent avail. There were two well-built soldiers on his kicking right leg, and three healers on his left. One of them held him at the foot and ankle, the other near the top of his thigh. The third in between them, the bone-setter surgeon, had what very much looked to Faramir as a bloody damned hammer and chisel, which he was using slowly, agonizingly carefully, on the wretched elf's long bone, exposed bare by cut, pried-apart flesh and muscle-_

_The wood-elf was still somehow bucking and screaming, managing to rise inches from his bed. Those who held him still strained. And there was still a bewildered guard on the ground and one calling for help outside._

_"Give him something!" Gimli the Dwarf demanded, to no one in particular for he had his face and beard pressed against his friend's body._

_"We've given a lot," one of the twins protested, "as much as we dared. He will lose consciousness on his own again soon."_

_"Not soon enough!" the bone-setter growled, "You need to keep him still now. He is harming himself and others."_

_"I have a hammer I can take to the core of your bones sir, let's see how you fare!" Gimli retorted, loyally._

_"Too right!" Pippin exclaimed from behind Faramir._

_The Imladris elves looked at each other and had a wordless conversation that had one of them giving a resigned, jerk of the head as if in agreement of something. Faramir understood how brothers "talked," and he stepped forward beside the twin who looked as if he was angling to move away. To prepare medicine, Faramir figured._

_"Let me," he said, and promptly took over holding down Legolas' left arm. He felt it like a jolt, the moment the twin left him to his own power in trying to pin it down. It was trembling and taut, all muscle and concentrated power, like an oversized snake or tentacle. No wonder the harnesses meant to hold him down at the wrists had broken._

_Legolas bucked and fought them all back, and Faramir strained from the exertion, his own injuries smarting. He grunted and growled, and wondered if this or any other thing caught the elf's attention and caused Legolas to turn towards him. The Prince's movements slowed, and he settled a sharp, cat-like gaze upon the Steward. He sniffed at the air and inhaled deeply before saying softly, inexplicably,_

_"The forest."_

_Faramir opened his mouth to reply – he wasn't sure how and with what but it seemed appropriate to do so – but then the elf's eyes rolled back and he fell to a dead faint against them. His stillness was so sudden that all who held him lurched forward in overreaction at the unexpected lightness and softness of their burden._

_They all relaxed, slowly, warily, as if the elf was going to spring back up at a given moment. The Imladris elf who had left to get more sleeping draught returned to find his target thoroughly unconscious. He scrambled for the prince's pulse and checked his eyes, both of which he found reasonably satisfactory._

_"Useless things," the twin who remained said distastefully at the torn bonds that were supposed to have held the ailing elf prince down._

_The dwarf said something similarly dispassionately too, in his own language. Faramir suspected it was a curse._

_Pippin sighed, and Faramir raised his eyes from the prince on the bed to the hobbit at the doors. Behind him, apparently just arrived, was a huffing wizard and two hall guards, all of them too late for whatever brand of restraint they each would have been able to give._

_In the ensuing quiet, the small, tinkering and vaguely malevolent sounds of a bone-setter's chipping and controlled-breaking work dominated the room, like the clinking of glasses, the jangling of chains, the chinking of a bag of coins..._

Faramir shuddered in memory.

_I cannot blame his forgetfulness_, he thought, _Perhaps it is for the best_.

"I am grateful for your help, but I do hope you did not strain yourself," Legolas said worriedly, noting the other's discomfort. He reached for the crutches in Faramir's hand to relieve him of the burden of carrying them, but the Steward ignored it for the moment to give the other more time to recover.

Faramir smiled to appease him. "I am mending, and I am glad to find you recovering and on your feet as well. Although – are you supposed to be?"

"I heal quickly now that the limb is finally set to rights," Legolas said, though he did let the man carry his crutches for a while longer, and he did not push away from the wall he was leaning against. "Moderate exercise is not discouraged."

Faramir caught the equivocation. "But not explicitly prescribed, especially without supervision, is it? You have a clever tongue."

Legolas laughed. "And you are clever to catch it. You grew up in court, didn't you?"

"More by necessity than choice," Faramir said wryly, though his heart stung at recalling his decimated family, and the lost youth and happiness that went away with every death. The perceptive elf caught the look on his face and smiled apologetically.

"Let us just say," Faramir said, "I find more solace and a sense of accomplishment in the wilds with my men."

"I can understand that," Legolas agreed. He shifted topics, and with a breathy respect that immediately made Faramir stand taller, the elf added - "You command the Rangers of Ithilien."

"I have that honor until Elessar withdraws it, yes."

"He will not," Legolas said with smiling certainty. "We saw some of your men fight at the Pelennor, and then even when you could not be with them, at the Morannon. They were exceptional, and honor is due their fearless leader."

The elven prince pushed from the wall and straightened up excitedly, his good leg bearing his weight. Faramir handed him his crutches and he accepted them gratefully as he continued, "But on a more personal note. Their presence on the battlefield was invaluable encouragement to me. They were garbed in greens and browns and armed primarily with bows, unlike most of the other Gondorian soldiers. They fought..."

He searched for the right word, and Faramir could see his eyes glaze, as if he sought and found a memory.

"They fought eloquently and," Legolas continued, "and familiarly. The movements, the tactics... I realized they reminded me of home and the more I thought of it, the more it became apparent. Clothes of forest camouflage, a style of sneakiness and stealth... we even smell similarly, did you know that?"

_"The forest," the elf had whispered in his pain-fueled madness_, Faramir remembered._ The elf had smelled me._

"We smell of the environs we frequent. The hobbits smell of tamed flora and fauna – food and flowers, ponies and pipeweed. Gimli smells of the forge, metal and stone and good gods, pipeweed too, and so on and so forth. Now we... one spends enough time skulking around in the wilds and you cannot rid yourself of traces of that scent," the prince said fondly. "Like grass stains on breeches, mulch on your boots, metallic earth and salts on the beds of your nails, and the nutty, woodsy bittersweet mix of leaves and twigs and pollen caught in your hair. It is camouflage too, for our foes have a good sense of smell."

_The forest..._

"Your Rangers reminded me of home," Legolas went on, "and I noticed they employed tactics similar to what our patrols do in the Woodland. We have – had, I suppose now - a protracted conflict in our lost Southern lands, which became contested after evil dwelt in Dol Guldur. It was not open warfare, and so it required a different skill set. I suspect you have a similar experience."

Faramir smiled grimly in appreciation of the elf's observations. "We have – had," he corrected himself wryly the same way Legolas had, and that is, to put the conflict in the past. "We had the same situation with Ithilien, which fell from Gondor's control due to the rise of Mordor on our East."

"Thus," concluded Legolas, "We both commanded small stealth patrols in contested land on a protracted war."

"And you are therefore, at least as clever and sneaky as I," Faramir said good-naturedly. "For instance – how did you manage to escape our guards and healers and end up outside your rooms, undetected and alone to do your mischief in the night?"

Legolas laughed. "Ah, my friend. All credit for that is due not to me, but to you. I can explain, but you will be embarrassed."

Faramir frowned. "What would I have to be embarrassed about?"

Legolas softened his expression to a gentle smile as he explained, "Because we have all recovered well, the healers originally placed in our immediate proximity were no longer needed and have been dismissed to other duties. That decreased the nighttime staff here significantly. Secondly, with things settling down, Elessar also decreased our security detail, with most of the soldiers dispatched to duties repairing the Kingdom, rather than coddling us."

He shook his head in fond remembrance of his friend. "His words, not mine. That_ adan_ has not shaken off the occasional bad habit of wanting to mope alone. He cannot stand being followed and watched at all times. At any rate – we are left with a handful of soldiers guarding the King's House for the night duty."

"You didn't knock them unconscious and conceal the bodies somewhere, did you?" Faramir teased.

"I appreciate your faith in my prowess," Legolas said wryly as he jerked a nod at his crutches in reference to his current infirmity, "but alas, I am not quite ready for such an exertion. They uh, the men of Gondor love you, Lord Faramir. Let us just say they..." he stifled a smile and searched for words. "Let us just say they make themselves scarce in the evenings you walk with Lady Eowyn so that you may have the privacy you need for whatever you intend."

Faramir felt his cheeks burn.

"I noticed this little phenomenon," Legolas said cheerfully, "and merely took advantage of the opportunity to stretch my legs without excessive supervision and encumberment to others."

Faramir thought back to all the walks he and the Lady have been taking and he could not recall running into anyone until now, with Legolas. He was so lost in Eowyn's nearness that he neither noticed nor bothered to consider why. When he was with her, it just seemed as if there was no one else in the world. Then again, there actually_ was_ no one else in their world while they walked.

"Good gods," he groaned. "Does everyone know?"

Legolas replied carefully. "The growing seeds of love after the brutality war is good news that everyone delights in sharing..."

Faramir ran his hands over his face. "Does her brother know?"

Legolas could not help but laugh. "One would think so."

Faramir sighed.  
"You are a fine prize, Lord Faramir," Legolas assured him. "And I am certain Eomer, like most everyone who knows the Lady Eowyn, knows she will anyway make up her own mind."

"She is... one of a kind," the Steward said with longing, "and I am a fool. She admires someone else and why shouldn't she? I admire the King myself."

"Seeds of love, Lord Faramir," Legolas reminded him, "Seeds – meant to be watered and nurtured. Maybe she will grow to love you, maybe she will not. But after everything, you owe yourselves all these chances. You should take her out on walks more. And meals – mortals have a disproportionate love of meals, I've learned this in my time with the Fellowship. But! But, and make careful note of this, do not let her cook, for the love of the gods. Hand her a sword before a skillet."

"I think I would eat anything touched by her hands."

Legolas shook his head at him in amusement. "Besotted."

"I am on my knees."

"Maybe you are the one in need of these crutches," Legolas teased.

The reminder of the elf's current state sent concern through Faramir's veins, and he realized the elf looked like he was tiring – blanched in a cold sweat, with a growing tremble to his form and breathiness to his speech.

"I think you've had enough of an excursion for tonight," Faramir said, "Perhaps I should see you to your rooms."

"I am honored to have the same privilege given only to the Lady Eowyn until now," Legolas teased, but he did not contest the Steward's suggestion.

"Let us be off," Faramir said, and he walked beside Legolas as the elf hobbled forward.

He was adroit in handling the crutches, Faramir noted. Legolas was a quick study for sure, but he suspected it was also because of the craftsmanship of one Gimli the dwarf who made the walking aids exquisitely customized to the elf's measurements and movements. He was injured still though, and previously long abed. He all but emanated exhaustion and waning, confirmed when he paused and whispered, "A moment if you will, Boromir."

Faramir held his breath, not quite knowing what to make of that. When his older brother was alive, he was a shadow beneath which Faramir always had to live. Now in death Boromir was a ghost that trailed him. His heart ached, dully, deeply and familiarly. It was an ache that he knew would always be a part of him.

Legolas belatedly caught his mistake. He grimaced, and a small but hard tap of one of the crutches against the ground also showed his dissatisfaction with himself.

"I am scattered and not yet fit for proper company it seems," he said quietly, apologetically. "You have your brother's gait, his form, a touch of his song. I walked beside him many a time. You are almost the same from the corner of my eye. But it does not excuse my thoughtlessness."

"I've lived with the specter of him all my life," Faramir said.

"What is one more incorrect impression?" Legolas asked, mournfully. "Ah, but one must always be known for themselves, even if one weren't as heroic as Faramir, Captain of the Rangers of Ithilien and Steward of Gondor. Even more so if one actually is Faramir, Captain of the Rangers of Ithilien and Steward of Gondor. I dishonor you by my mistake, for which I apologize."

"You need not," Faramir told him mildly, "But I accept if it will bring your mind some ease."

Legolas brightened, and they resumed their way forward, toward the doors to his rooms.

"Though I apologize for disrupting your evening," Legolas told the man, "I enjoyed your company. Rest assured however – my lesson is learned and you will find no similar disturbance from me on succeeding nights that you walk with the lovely Lady Eowyn."

"No more unauthorized excursions that would horrify healers?"

Legolas chuckled. "Well not at night anyway, when I am liable to disturb you and the fair lady. I will find other opportunities."

Faramir clucked his tongue at the elf, but without heat. "I do not doubt it," he said wryly, before inspiration struck him. "Why don't you get proper clearance from our healers and come see or join my men? We have people in various states of convalescence, some of them regaining their strengths in our archery ranges."

Legolas hesitated. "I am..." he shook his head at himself.

"I apologize if I've breached protocol," Faramir said quickly. This was an elven prince from an isolationist kingdom, he reminded himself. Thousands of years old, an elven royal to boot. Why would he wish to be in the company of barely-recovered mortal soldiers?

"It's not that," Legolas said, just as quickly in apparent realization that Faramir thought he found the invitation inappropriate. "I would say nothing but... But it would grieve me if we parted this night with you bearing that belief. It's because I am unfit yet for company, as I said. I am one of three Eldar in the City at the moment, just three. I bear the name and reputation of my race, my father, my kingdom, and the Fellowship. I do not wish to be seen when I am not at my best."

"Disability does not diminish you," Faramir said gently.

"It does not," Legolas conceded. "But there is, there is a sense of fragility to fresh victory, do you not think so? By habit, many of us suspect it can be taken away tomorrow. Is this another Watchful Peace or one that will last? How certain are we that this is the end? I know in my mind that I can no longer feel evil, but my heart is guarded and vigilant. That is the real disability, I think, this distrust in the outcome. The scar we all bear, the shadow that will always be in the corner of the room, at the edge of our sight. And I refuse to be seen as damaged and unprepared if there is more to come."

"Pride?"

"I wish," Legolas said and after a beat admitted, "Perhaps I can confess to some. But mostly - fear. I wish to dispel people's fear, not cause it. I want them to feel safe because I am able. I do not want them to be afraid because I am broken."

Faramir remembered then, how powerful the elf looked in the throes of agony during his surgery. How he'd been held down and cut open and he still bucked and punched and kicked and sent full-grown soldiers to the floor. _That_ was power, not invincibility. Invincibility, while enviable and certainly reassuring, was comparatively sterile and uninspiring. The gracious light and neatness and carefully constructed imagery of the elves was no match for Legolas' disheveled, unfettered wood-elf savagery and determination. Battered and bloodied and still not down for the count. Faramir wondered if he should say it, and how.

"Well I suppose," Faramir teased tentatively, "If you cannot practice archery with a bum leg..."

"I can shoot blind on my knees with my teeth and half my blood volume if I had to, Captain," Legolas snapped, before his face widened to a grin at the quick realization that he'd bitten, all to easily, into bait.

"Take rest now," Faramir told him with a grin of his own. "And we shall welcome you to our fold any time you are ready, your highness."

"Tomorrow morning?"

Faramir sighed. "No, my lord. Only when you secure proper clearance and supervision from the healers."

Legolas beamed. "Tomorrow morning, then."

**THE END**  
April 2, 2019


	7. 7: Rise Again

**hello everyone!**

I've been quiet for awhile, and I would apologize for being so late in reviewer responses again but I think you've heard it so many times by now :( I honestly am not even sure what day it is! All I can say now is that I thank everyone for sharing their time with me here, especially to my kind reviewers. I value each and every single one, I promise you that. I am working on several fics at the same time on top of RL work, so it's been crazy. I am sending this out hoping to jostle myself into better productivity. Hopefully it works :) At any rate, without further ado, the latest stand-alone in the series. Your C&Cs are always welcome and treasured. Thank you!

**# # #**  
**"Rise Again"**  
_A party of Mirkwood elves are sent to attend Elessar's wedding in Minas Tirith. But aside from representing Thranduil in Gondor and bearing messages and good wishes, they come with an even more important mission: to get the injured Woodland Prince back on his feet_

# # #

_Minas Tirith_  
_Before the Wedding of the King_  
# # #

Their hair and clothes still subtly reeked of smoke, and the precious forest they've long fought to preserve was barely recovered from the ravages of Sauron and his minions' hateful fire.

But when the wood-elf party left Thranduil's Halls headed toward Minas Tirith, one would not know it. There was no hint whatsoever that the Woodland elves were still regaining their footing in the victorious new age that had come with a steep price.

Their war horses were large, mighty, well-fed, well-groomed and well-rested, hungry for ground. Their clothes were resplendent, their armor gleaming. Their soldiers' wounds were healing and scars well-hidden.

They bore with them a felicitous set of three priceless gifts for the newly-installed human King – one for himself in congratulations for his victory and in gratitude for his contributions; there was another gift for him and his wife-to-be, the vaunted Evenstar, for their wedding; and a third gift, a hopeful offering for the child they were soon expected to have.

It was a large traveling party, befitting royalty attending one of the most important occasions of all the ages: the wedding of Aragorn the King and Arwen the Evenstar.

Within this traveling party were solders, high-ranking nobles and their spouses, and a mobile household with all the proper trappings, sent at the behest of the Elvenking. There were luxurious tents and carts for setting up camp, and attendants aplenty for everyone's needs.

It was a royal party indeed, except for the minor snag of not having royalty among them.

The Elvenking was unable to attend the upcoming wedding, owing to his obligations to his own recovering kingdom. He sent forth three members of his high council instead. His top diplomat was an easy choice, in charge as he was in matters of external relations. Thranduil's chief of trade and commerce also had a place in the wedding party. With so many powerful and illustrious attendees expected, business opportunities abounded too. The Elvenking entertained plans of re-opening routes to and through their too-long forbidden forest (taxable to tradesmen of sizeable businesses). But aside from his woods being a short path between the prolific producers of the Northeast and the well-developed markets of the West, he himself had rare goods to share. While protracted fighting and the final fire of the War of the Ring had scarred their forest, seeds and foliage and all sorts of diverse goods grew and were spared in the Woodland, which were unavailable anywhere else. Their wealth in herbs and medicine alone – expertise hard-earned by their proximity to the Enchanted River and the pestilence of poisonous spider filth – was promising.

There was, however, a third councilman from Thranduil's innermost circle whose dispatch to Minas Tirith might at first seem strange.

But the truth was, Lord Maenor, health minister and chief-most healer of the Woodland Realm, the royal physician whose hands were one of the few that ever held Thranduil's skin and that of members of his family, was sent forth... and he had the most important job of them all.

Thranduil's son was already in Minas Tirith. The Prince Legolas was instrumental in the Free People's victory and the installation of Elessar, and he had pride of place amongst the wedding attendees due to his active contributions to the cause of, and brotherly friendship with, the human King. But he also had another cause to ne there: he was expected to represent his father the Elvenking in all the festivities.

Word had reached the Woodland that he was alive, but grievously injured. Lord Maenor's task, therefore, was to get him back on his feet.

Healing that particular, delightful miscreant was a task Lord Maenor was well-experienced in and especially good at.

# # #

# # #

But first, a few logistical arrangements and diplomatic formalities.

An advance scout had gone ahead of the unwieldly procession to inform the border guards at Gondor that the elves were nearby and on their way. They were then greeted at the gates by the King of Gondor's councilmen and protocol officers.

The elves were allotted space in the fields surrounding the mighty walled city to put up their camp, and arrangements were duly made with Gondor's Minister of the Interior as well as the War Minister.

The dignitaries were then escorted up into the City, past each of its levels and up to the Citadel, where they were received by the King of Gondor himself in his throne room.

They exchanged formal greetings, with the Woodland elves presenting their credentials, and then offering their presents to the King. Elessar accomplished everything with an easy but powerful confidence, looking every inch like a man born for the role.

Interestingly, Maenor reflected, he'd looked just as fitting as the weather-worn Strider too. His ready adaptability to these polar ends was a rare quality.

Maenor had met Aragorn, Son of Arathorn before. The adan's friendship with Legolas had brought him into the Woodland several times, and those visits often included spells in the healing halls. It was probably why, while the new King greeted everyone in the elven party graciously, he was overtly warm at Maenor among them.

"My lord Maenor!" Aragorn greeted him, clasping his hands familiarly at the conclusion of the formal exchanges. "It is good to see you, old friend."

"We bring greetings and good wishes from our King," said Maenor, "But if you would permit me to say, your highness, it is with the greatest personal pleasure that I stand before you in these circumstances on this blessed day. The stars shine upon us."

Aragorn smiled gently. "Aye. That, they do." He looked around him, and not quite finding what he was seeking, he turned back to Maenor and the other representatives of Thranduil. "I ah, I do believe I owe you a wood-elf."

"We have much to report to our Prince," agreed one of the elven lords gravely. He bore with him an intricate box wax-sealed under the Thranduil's brand and addressed to Legolas Greenleaf alone.

"Indeed," Aragorn murmured, and he motioned for his secretary, who scurried forward and whispered something in his ear. The King gave out a long-suffering sigh, but his eyes were wrinkled in mild amusement.

"Do you mean to tell me," the King of Gondor said with mock-reproach, "that I am now tasked with telling our dear guests that though they came all this way to see Prince Legolas, we cannot account for his whereabouts? That we have – somehow - misplaced a broken-legged soldier who is theoretically confined to quarters guarded by a dedicated minder and that we cannot locate the only golden elf in a walled city?"

The secretary did not know what to make of his King's macabre humor, but Maenor did. The healer had dealt with it often enough with Legolas after all, and there was a reason his prince and Elessar were such good friends.

"Do not feel so bad about it," Maenor told him good-naturedly. "It certainly wouldn't be the first time."

One of the human King's close guards elbowed another beside him, and they shifted from leg to leg, uneasily. The movements were soundless and they stood behind Elessar, but the perceptive King turned toward them just the same.

"Ah, we have informants in our midst. Speak, soldier."

The two guards bowed smartly before one of them replied, "We have been taking-" He was elbowed to silence by his compatriot, who blushed appropriately when Aragorn's kingly eyebrow raised in censure.

"That is to say," he corrected himself, "Word has it, some of the uh, _other_ soldiers have been making wagers on the outcome of a uh, certain exhibition currently ongoing at the ranges on the sixth level, your highness."

"Are they now," Aragorn murmured. He turned toward his Woodland guests. "I happen to be fond of exhibitions. Are you?"

"Some more than others," Maenor said wryly.

# # #

# # #

The sixth level of the city was a well-ordered one, comprised of a fully-equipped military detachment; the expansive Healing Halls; and reverently but ominously related to both, the Closed Door and Silent Street that led into the places of the noble dead.

"Send no word ahead," the human King had explicitly ordered his secretary and his soldiers back in the receiving halls they left behind. It was why, as he and his party of elves and men sauntered their way out the throne room to the landscaped exteriors of the Citadel, and down the fortified tunnel that led to the sixth level – soldiers and staff had to rapidly shut dropped jaws of surprise before bowing as their King passed.

Elessar led the way of course, his formidable figure and powerful stance a beacon to those who followed him: his secretary, his personal guards, a handful of his ministers, their elven guests, the elven guests' personal guards... the party would even be trailed by the curious, including the eager children of servants and staff who tended to mill around the King's household.

The whole lot of them found their way to the sixth level garrison's archery ranges where, contrary to the attention they've been receiving on the walk there, their arrival was mostly missed by soldiers crowding (and yes, betting) around an exhibition.

A few soldiers on the fringes of the action noticed the King and opened their mouths to speak, but Aragorn shushed them wordlessly but effectively, raising a very royal hand. They nervously but excitedly kept quiet, and made room such that their sovereign and his guests would have a view of the show.

Along one wall was a row of well-worn targets. Paces away were a row of three corresponding archers donned in the forest colors signature of the Rangers of Ithilien. Unsurprisingly, their Captain Faramir was amongst them, not in line to shoot but looking on with a small smile. More surprisingly however, was a presence in the lineup who did not quite belong.

The golden head of the elven Prince of the Woodland, was set lower than that of the others; he was seated on a bale of hay apparently borrowed from the nearby stables. His healing and heavily-bound leg was stretched before him and his excellently crafted crutches were set neatly by his boots in explanation of his seated posture, but he was unmistakably a contestant. He was armed with his bow and arrows and like the other two soldiers on the lineup, taking aim.

"Fire!" Faramir declared cheerfully, and off the shafts – each owner having different colored fletching to mark his arrow - went.

Each one found not only the bullseye of their respective targets, but the very center of it. This outcome was expected; the target, after all, was still and well-defined, and of a distance that most experienced marksmen would have conquered even as youths.

But the contest was not so easy as all that.

Gleeful chaos interrupted when the full extent of the challenge soon became clear. The archers started taking aim at each other's targets, while firing shots to defend their own and deflect the efforts of others.

There was much laughter and cheering, both from the crowd and the archers themselves, as arrows went flying, sometimes erratically.

The King's personal guards tensed, but he himself was laughing, silvery-gray eyes shining at the mad but skillful display.

Fraamir let the madness continue briefly, before counting down aloud from ten, making the archers' efforts even more energetic. When he commanded "Halt!" though, the response was soldierly and immediate. The archers stopped, and Faramir and an attendant moved forward to examine the results.

The first target's bullseye was crowded; his red-fletched arrow was dead center, surrounded by a thick collection of his two opponents' shafts of gold and blue.

"You did not focus much on defense, did you?" Faramir asked.

"I made the strategic decision to focus on offense, Captain," he admitted. "It is my better strength."

"We shall see if it worked for you," Faramir said as he moved on to the next. This target's bullseye was even more crowded; the Ithilien Ranger's blue-fletched arrow was in the middle, surrounded by a deluge of reds (in keeping with the previous archer's strategy) and golds. He was in the middle, so defense would have been more difficult fending off the efforts of the archers to his left and right.

Faramir and his attendant did the count, and each number was yelled at a stable boy in charge of a posted parchment, where the scores were listed, arranged in rounds and rows. This was apparently the third round, with the positions exchanged amongst the three archers for fairness. The numbers tallied how many bullseyes they scored on their opponents' targets, less the bullseyes scored against their own. It was an exercise of balancing offensive and defensive shooting.

Finally, Faramir and his attendant stepped up to Legolas' relatively pristine target board. Only a couple of shafts of reds and blues have made their way here. The Gondorian Captain looked at the elf wryly, and Legolas grinned at him.

Legolas' scores were called out, and most everyone there mentally tallied out the totals of all three rounds amongst the three opponents. It was Aragorn that beat them all to the final count.

"The Prince of the Woodland Realm wins by a margin of 14," he declared in a loud, confident voice, marked by some wry humor.

Cheers erupted amongst the cheerful audience and winning betters, while moans were heard amongst those who lost. But all sound petered off when it was quickly noted it was their King who had spoken.

Aragorn stepped forward and everyone shushed and bowed. The elven prince started reaching for his crutches, apparently about to do the same, until the human King muttered in Sindarin:

"Don't you dare."

The elf kept his seat, but with a grin, nodded extremely gravely.

"At ease!" the King told his people, and Faramir commanded all in hearing range to disperse and return to their duties, while he walked toward the new arrivals. With some ceremony, Aragorn stood aside and let the elves behind him come forward, to Legolas' wide-eyed astonishment and delight. But when each elf fell to a one knee with heads bowed in deference to their Prince before them, his expression quickly deteriorated to alarm.

"Is it_ adar_?" he asked urgently, again scrambling for his crutches to rise. Maenor expected the reaction; in their royal protocols, no one's head stood above that of the Elvenking's. If Legolas was now being subject to the same treatment, he would come to the quick conclusion that something must have befallen his father. The healer was therefore ready with a quick reply.

"Peace, _hir-nin_," Maenor told him quickly. "Aran-nin is in excellent health. But you are his appointed voice and presence here, and so you are in a similar official capacity."

One of the elves stepped forward then, and presented Legolas with a sealed, plain box. He exhaled in relief, but it did not slip Maenor's notice that his prince's hand was still shaking when he took a knife from his sleeve to open the offering. Legolas paused at the Elvenking's seal, however, and ran his fingers over the grooves on the wax.

"He'd made changes," Legolas murmured, almost reverently as his tongue danced over the words, the new name of his old home, "_Eryn Lasgalen_."

Maenor doubted it escaped his notice that it sounded like his own name. Nevertheless Legolas cut at the seal, and inside the box was his princely circlet, sitting on a bed of rich velvet. He took it, as only he was allowed to, and he put it haphazardly on his head (as only he could).

The elf who had offered it backed away, and Legolas looked up to find Aragorn, Faramir, and the King's ministers, guards and attendants bowing respectfully at him too, for the wearing of the crown ushered in a necessary formality to their circumstances, even if he was so willing to approach things more cavalierly.  
Legolas returned the gesture as much as he could from his position sitting on a bale of hay, before turning to his own people.

"I would have you stand now," he said. "As the Elvenking's voice here, that is my command and as such, I expect it to be followed. I cannot have a serious conversation like this."

They rose as directed, and he picked up his crutches to do the same. Aragorn stepped forward and helped him rise; as a King, he was the only one who could touch the Prince without express invitation.

"_Hannon-le, mellon-nin_," Legolas told him breathlessly, imparting more casualness into the formalized setting. He had been delighted by the arrival of his people, but now looked nervous. Maenor knew why: he was getting ready to receive firsthand news from home, for all the good and bad of it.

Aragorn helped plant Legolas on his feet and teased, "You know under battlefield conditions with the goal of shooting to kill, an expert human marksman can fire out about a dozen arrow shots a minute. Their vaunted Eldar counterparts can reportedly do sixteen. And then there's this particular elf we both know, who is reputed to be able to do twenty."

Legolas looked at him fondly, and Maenor himself was grateful for the perceptive human's disarming distraction. "What are you saying, Estel?"

"Twenty draws across three minute-long rounds makes sixty, and let's say less than half of that you expended on defensive shots against human archers –"

"And since becoming a King you have become an arithmetic tutor..."

"You could have done much better," Aragorn summarized, impishly.

"Ah, but they should see what I can do on two feet," Legolas pointed out with a grin. He turned toward Maenor. "Isn't that right, my lord?"

"You shouldn't be pushing yourself, _hir-nin_," came the flat, stern, displeased reply.

"A little exercise never hurt anyone," Legolas said. "And I wasn't straining anything while shooting sitting down, was I? I know my limits."

A minor commotion had them turning their attention to a new arrival, whose presence had Legolas flushing in mild chagrin.

It was Gimli the Dwarf, and proud son of the Gloin who had been one of several famous escapees from Thranduil's dungeons. But he was an embarrassment to the Woodland Prince for neither of these reasons.

Legolas' precious Elvellon, whose friendship with the Prince had previously been reported to the Woodland, was also, apparently, a willing co-conspirator to some ill-conceived plan. The dwarf had a white warhorse by the lead in one hand and a tankard of ale in the other, as he walked forward and obliviously proclaimed:

"Who is ready to up the stakes, eh? Laddie, I got the beastie just as you-"

"Ah my dear friend, Gimli!" Legolas said overly cheerfully, cutting him off. "Come, you must meet the delegation from home."

Gimli studied his new situation quickly. The human soldiers were mostly gone, the bets were off, there was a stern set of elves in company, and Aragorn was looking at him with a raised brow.

"And what were you two planning on doing?"

Elf and dwarf wisely refrained from replying.

# # #

# # #

The Woodland elves retreated to Legolas' suites at the King's House for a debriefing, and settled themselves around the office at the antechambers leading to the Prince's sleeping quarters. Gimli, Aragorn and the Gondorians left them to their business, but wine, tea and a light meal was sent for refreshments.

Legolas listened, dutifully, as they gave him tactical information on what had happened while he was away. Brief messages have been exchanged between the Woodland and Gondor since the end of the War, but now they could be more granular and detailed in their discussions. As a high-ranking military officer and his father's heir, Legolas was both privileged and duty-bound to receive news on key battles and outcomes, territories lost and gained, the number of casualties, and some minutiae including details on provisions remaining and projections post-war.

He listened intently and asked intelligent questions. He kept his queries objective, quantitative and productive, exactly as he had been trained to do since his soldierly life began. Maenor, however, knew any warm-blooded being in Arda would rather ask the specific fates of those he loved, but they all had a job to do first.

After they debriefed their prince about the War from their front in the Woodland, Legolas took his own turn at regaling his people on all that he'd done since leaving home these months past. It would be transcribed and reported to his commanders as well as his father the Elvenking. Officially, it was an account of an officer's time and actions while on an away duty. It would also be for their kingdom's histories. But unofficially – Legolas' story was for the Elvenking's pleasure, to hear of all that his son had accomplished before the eyes of the wider world. Wild tales have already been circulating about Legolas of Mirkwood (though Thranduil took exception to 'Mirkwood' and always had), and their king was aching for details. This would have to do, until father and son met and debriefed face to face.

They eventually worked their way to discussing the present time, with the ministers briefing Legolas on the Elvenking's trade plans and all the dignitaries the Prince was expected to meet with while everyone was in attendance for Elessar's wedding. They even brought him paperwork to review for the discussions, which he received with a predictable lack of enthusiasm.

Legolas adjourned the meeting shortly afterwards, dismissing the new arrivals to their rest. Less urgent matters could be discussed later, when everyone was expected at the King's dining hall for a welcome feast. There were also preparatory trade meetings scheduled in the next few days, so there were plenty of opportunities to discuss matters of state.

The wood-elves filed out of his chambers to return to their camp, but Maenor lingered with business of a more private nature. Legolas did not look surprised.

"The Gondorian soldier seconded to you will be released from his borrowed duties and replaced by two of our own," Maenor told him, opening with official matters.

"I was sent to Mordor with four non-combatant hobbits," Legolas said with a weary laugh. "Now I need two minders in a victorious city?"

"The Elvenking was originally contemplating a rather intimidating six but that would be excessive," Maenor joked. "At any rate, both of them are primarily your guards, but also serve as valet and personal secretary. Between the two of them, they should be able to handle any imaginable need _ernil-nin_ may have to help him represent our aran and our new kingdom well."

It was a veiled reminder of his duties to simply accept the imposition, and Maenor knew Legolas understood this by the brow he quirked at the healer.

"I am happy to receive them."

"A few more matters of housekeeping," Maenor continued. "The traveling party sent forth by aran-nin befits the status of a king. It is a proper royal household, my lord, with a small contingent of representative courtiers and attendants, and all the comforts of a proper camp. We were given generous space at the fields surrounding Minas Tirith, where the royal entourages of other territories have set up their own traveling kingdoms. All of us from the Woodland here come in support of you, as you represent your father and our people. We are all at your disposal. We even brought you a royal tent, if you would rather settle there."

Legolas shook his head. "I appreciate aran-nin's generosity, but I am well settled here presently, and I have minimal needs."

"That you stay here is also my recommendation," Maenor said with satisfaction. "With your leg still healing and most business to be conducted here in the city, I would rather you did not have to keep going back and forth. With that settled, I shall proceed to other matters with your approval?"

"Yes, please."

Maenor drew out a rolled parchment from the folds of his clothes. It was under the seal of Legolas' father just like the box that held his circlet, indicating it was meant for Legolas' eyes alone. It was thick and certainly held a letter, but it also had a small ribbon of black, which indicated the Elvenking had included a casualty list. Maenor gave it to Legolas with two hands palms up, reverently.

"I know you are weary and eager for your father's words," he said gently after Legolas took the offering, "But let me do my other job, as our king demanded me to do, and as you know he demands you to suffer. Let me ascertain for myself your good health, and then I will leave you in peace with your letters, and your thoughts."

Legolas bit his lip in hesitation, but nodded. He removed the circlet from his head and planted it on his desk beside his father's letter, before pushing himself up to stand. With the removal of the princely bauble, this time, Maenor needed no invitation to help.

Legolas' injured leg had gone stiff and bothersome from the hours of sitting and the day's earlier exhibition. Ignoring the crutches for now, Maenor helped his Prince to his feet and then the bed in the sleeping chambers, heavily leant upon his shoulders. He settled Legolas to sit, and took a sleeping gown hanging from the wardrobe and placed it beside him. Maenor removed his Prince's boots and helped him with his tunic, but left it at that. They were both used to this dance between the soldier-prince and his healer, and Maenor knew the extent of Legolas' preferences for accepting help. He turned away from Legolas and cleaned his hands thoroughly at the quarters' washbasin, while Legolas took care of his own undershirt and breeches, and slipped on the sleeping gown.  
He settled in bed to subject himself to Maenor's thorough examination, which the experienced healer did from the head going down, using his eyes, his hands, and the touch of his probing _fea_.

He found something amiss right away.

He'd barely scratched the surface when his soul felt as if it had been struck by lightning or thrown from a height or picked up by a whirlwind or something else, he wasn't sure. But whatever it was, the sensation was sudden and jarring and sublime, large and deep, unfathomable. He gasped, and he felt Legolas' fea wrenching itself from his healer's prying reach.

"Ah that is perhaps not so wise at the moment," Legolas said quietly. "I do not have a good grasp of it all just yet."

_The sea_, Maenor realized.

The Lord and Lady of Lothlorien had been in the Woodland during the War, and told Thranduil of the paths his son was taking and what it could mean for stirring the Prince's sea-longing. Thranduil had discussed it with Maenor in confidence, in case it informed his healing of Legolas. But Maenor, who himself was a stranger to the phenomenon, did not know what to do with it. It had even escaped his remembrance until now, for Legolas still seemed like his old self. That there was a storm raging beneath him was something Maenor would not have guessed on sight, and this was an elf he knew very well. It made his heart ache.

"Is it," the healer hesitated, "is it always so... so _loud_?"

_And absorbing? And undeniable? And inescapable?_

"When it is quiet and I have nothing to do," Legolas replied with a wince. "And when I hurt or am tired."

Maenor pressed his lips together grimly.

"You know by that equation," said Maenor, "You hear it when you have nothing to do, you occupy yourself until you are exhausted, and when you are exhausted you hear it again. That is a very slim frame of time where it does not plague you..."

Legolas ignored the thought, which struck Maenor with fear because what it all came down to was this: barring few snatches of time, the Sea was indeed always _loud_.

_It is always absorbing. It is always undeniable. It is always inescapable..._

"It would have to be just your eyes and your hands this time, my lord," Legolas teased, to take the edge off of their conversation. "Now you are just like everyone else."

"You forget about my intelligence, good humor and fellow-feeling," Maenor caught on quickly.

"I suppose that would have to do," Legolas smiled.

The healer reached for the sides of the other's neck and frowned, immediately finding something wrong again, as signified by a renewed frown. Legolas rolled his eyes.

"You are harder to please than _adar_."

"You are fever-warm," Maenor said.

"It comes and goes."

"That is not comforting," the healer retorted, "It could be indicative of an infection."

"I feel strong," Legolas countered, "it comes with exertion and is less and less of a bother to me."

Maenor sighed out a breath of resigned frustration. "I will give you medicine for it and observe. But no more of these exhibitions of yours until it completely clears."

"Well I am buried in paperwork," Legolas said, "I do not have much of a choice."

"Good," Maenor snorted, as he continued his examination.

Legolas watched him as he worked his way down to the main reason for all the bother: the broken left leg, heavily bound in cloths, splints and leathers. Maenor removed them gently. He'd been briefed on everything that had been done for his Prince's injury, but he needed his eyes and hands to go over the clues left behind by scars and bruising, and let them tell him the background and prognosis firsthand.

He could almost see it in his mind's eye – a broken long bone that did not break skin, but had its edges jutting and pressing against muscles and nerves within. He imagined Legolas emerging from the battlefield (more or less) on it - because, Legolas – every hobbling movement making parts grind within and against each other and their tender surroundings. He imagined foreign hands on his prince's skin, imagined they made him wait, only for the delayed treatment to be marred by complication after complication.

"We were told you were not given immediate aid," he murmured, barely concealing his displeasure.

Legolas read through it easily. "Such a report would be unjust to the healers here. I was given appropriate care given the situation we were all in."

"Elessar's letter to our king mentioned you eschewed diplomatic war protocols and refused the immediate surgery you should have been entitled to as a foreign prince."

"I did," Legolas admitted, though he sounded mildly irate. "I commanded the Gondorian healers to defer to triage and care for those more ailing first. I really shouldn't be given so much grief about this, my lord Maenor. I've already had an earful from Gimli, Aragorn-"

"Your father approved," Maenor cut him off, and the prince's mouth gaped open in pleased, embarrassed astonishment for a long moment before he closed it.

"He was quite proud of you," Maenor went on. "Of course, his joy at raising a good son was quickly diminished as more information on your condition was made known to us over the days and weeks that followed. Imagine it: the first letter says you are victorious and alive, marred only by a broken leg thank the gods, and nobly foregoing treatment in deference to the needs of others too. A true hero."

Legolas snorted at him wearily, for the last sentence had been delivered with both sincerity and Maenor's acidic humor.

"Then came news of your infection and deterioration at the Cormallen," Maenor went on. "At which case aran-nin began to harbor doubts and thought perhaps self-sacrifice and heroism at this stage of the game are uncalled for, and you should have been seen to earlier. And then came news of your safe return to Minas Tirith, except a misalignment to your bones led to the necessity of a second surgery. Aran-nin quickly decided you were a grandstanding fool after all."

It was a joke (laced with some truth, but still), and Legolas laughed. "It is always a sad thing when children disappoint their parents, isn't it?"

"Ah it is funny now but you cannot believe the speed by which I was dispatched here to join the wedding party," said Maenor. "The moment we determined I could be spared from pressing duties at home, Aran-nin barely gave me time to pack my smallclothes."

"The gods spare us from such a thing!" Legolas said sunnily. "But I could hardly be blamed for any of this. Ask the Lord Elrond's sons – healers _almost_ as fine as your _vaunted_ self, yes? – sometimes unexpected complications are just what they are."

"Almost," Maenor scoffed. "At any rate - 'Get there before anything else happens,' your _adar_ told me, and here I am."

"I am well cared for here," Legolas assured him, "But I am nonetheless pleased to see you." He paused in thought before adding, "I am relieved. From how you speak of _adar_, he very much sounds like himself."

"He will not mention it in his letters," Maenor said quietly, "but he is beloved and admired more than ever with the extraordinary valor he had displayed in the final battles of the War. But I suspect he is unaware of it himself. You know how he is – he goes on, always. Through every loss, every scar, every inch of land lost, he endures."

"Did he get hurt?" Legolas asked.

"Everyone did."

"You clothes smell like smoke," the younger elf said softly.

"I wondered if you could tell," Maenor confessed.

"It's been plaguing me all day," Legolas said, "and I have questions I am not sure I want the answers to. Our woods, ravaged... and I've lost friends, haven't I? And somehow I've traipsed all over Arda not even knowing it, or giving it much thought."

"You couldn't have survived doing all the things you accomplished if you had to think of that," Maenor pointed out. "You cannot do your work properly if you are distracted thinking of things you can do nothing about. Can you, for instance, believe we were thinking about your fate the whole time you were away on such dangerous business? Your adar would have lost his mind, and us along with him."

The younger elf would not be comforted. "Who have I lost?" Legolas asked. "Who was lost while I was away, while I was languishing in bed and obliviously, callously amusing myself here?"

"You had a mission different from all the rest of us," Maenor argued. "Arguably a more important one, certainly a more dangerous one. And you were injured and recovering, hardly malingering or just entertaining yourself."

"Who have I lost?" Legolas insisted.

Maenor sighed. "Your father's letter will say more, and more properly."

"I am desperate for news and afraid of answers," Legolas admitted. "Give me a name, my lord. Someone that will hurt, so that I will know what to expect."

"Your father's letter-"

"Maenor, please."

The healer fell silent, and for a long moment, they both just breathed as Maenor re-bound his prince's injury.

"Every name will hurt," Maenor said. "Expecting a blow from one and hoping it would ease the way for the rest is folly. We are no virgins to loss and grief, you and I. You know, you know it does not get easier. And so loss might as well be said and heard properly – as it will be, once you have a chance to go through your father's letter."

Legolas ran his hands through his hair and then kept them on his face, over his eyes.

"I will read his letter," he said, voice muffled beneath his palms, "I will go through their names. Then I will be dressing for dinner and hobnobbing amongst the nobility here present, and then at night I will be reading about trade, and in the morning discussing it. Is that just how it is? You have all mourned and what's past is past. But tonight all the names in adar's letter will die to me. Tonight they will die, all at once, to me."

Maenor did not deny that would be the case. He couldn't deny it. He did not know what to say, but Legolas spared him from further thought.

"Forgive me," Legolas said, taking his moist hands from his dried eyes. "It was a moment's indulgence. We work, of course we work." He hesitated before saying – "Do not tell _adar_."

Maenor couldn't promise that, so instead he left Legolas with a pat on the leg, and headed to the anteroom. There, he picked up the unopened letter and the crutches. The missive he placed in Legolas' hands. The crutches he settled next to the bed, within easy reach.

"_Hannon le_, my lord," Legolas said quietly.

"I will prepare your medicine and leave you to your rest," Maenor said. In the anteroom, he arranged his wares while listening with half an ear at what Legolas could be doing alone in his sleeping chambers. He wondered if the younger elf would begin reading the letter while waiting.

He did not. As a matter of fact he barely moved from how Maenor had left him, breathing slowly with the letter unopened in his hands. When the healer returned, he found his Prince adrift and away. His gaze was abstract but not in elven dreams, in something else entirely.

Warily, Maenor extended his _fea_ toward the other's. He heard gulls and crashing waves, and smelled salt, and felt sea spray kissing his face and infinite grains of soft sand beneath his feet. He saw the sky and ocean vast and wide and seemingly unending, just a dramatic expanse of open space, unbroken, meeting somewhere beyond sight. They extended forward and outward well beyond what the eye could see. They made a horizon so large it diminished you, and you are lost in it, just another grain of sand, just another drop of water. Yet it also enlarged you – as part of a larger whole, a note in a song. It pinched his heart, to feel a taste of that distant belonging.

Maenor withdrew. This was not his call. Even then he had to admit, it was such exquisite torture. A sweet, sweet sorrow. And he suddenly knew with complete certainty, that one day this was an elf who would have to sail away.

It was in an indeterminate future, yet the realization hit Maenor like a loss, like a death. _Tonight you die, to me..._

"Oh Legolas," he said hoarsely, but the elf with him was inattentive, unaware, and Maenor was most relieved for it.

_We work_, he told himself. Through it all, like his king and like his prince, work was endurance, work was salvation. And so he focused on his own:

_I will fix you in record time_, he vowed. _Your life from here will not be easy going, Thranduilion, but you will be on your feet working and fighting, as always. Mark my word._

Maenor composed himself before saying, more commandingly – "Legolas."

The young elf looked up at him, and Maenor offered him a cup of medicine to drink. He took it without complaint or comment, and in moments, his body relaxed.

"I will speak to the other ministers and make arrangements with your secretary," Maenor said. "Your schedule will have to accommodate daily, proper physical therapy, massages, and strengthening exercises with me."

"You are looking very determined and serious," Legolas said with a coaxing smile. "I am almost afraid."

"You'd better be," Maenor said jauntily.

"Mostly I look forward to it," Legolas said sincerely, and Maenor did too.

Together, they would work and rise again.

**THE END**  
June 24, 2019


	8. 8: Death Still

# # #  
**Death Still**  
_The War may be over, but death still comes to visit... and for one elf, this is more cruel and devastating_

# # #

_Minas Tirith_  
_After the Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen_

# # #

The city was abuzz with constant activity.

Everywhere that one turned, in almost all hours of the day, things were moving. Homes and shops and offices were being re-built, markets moved all sorts of goods and services, and carts hauled construction materials and post-war wreckage and detritus up and down the sloping, winding streets of Minas Tirith.

The city had come from the heights of fear and the brink of destruction, to victory and celebration. First they relished in survival, and then the return of their King, and now, in the afterglow of their King's marriage to the elven Evenstar, they awaited an heir and dared to look to their future.

There had been feasts aplenty, helplessly intertwined with tending to the injured, looking for the missing, mourning the dead and now, finally... it was time to get back to work.

The twists of fate and godly caprices that brought Olorin – Mithrandir to some and Gandalf to others, amongst a host of other names both favorable and not – to the city continued. He'd been prominent in its deliverance, and now he couldn't walk the streets without his counsel being sought for one thing or another. In this bright morning's walk, he'd blessed two newborns thrust his way, been told to scare the boots off of three erring juveniles who'd been up to mischief, been consulted on the structure of three houses, and been invited to four breakfasts.

_And to think all he wanted was to get to the markets for a good smoke!_

Unfortunately it had run out; there were still price controls and rationing in place as everyone worked toward normalizing commerce. And while he praised Aragorn and his post-war Council for their wisdom, the wizard was also tempted to unleash an unholy rage at _the travesty! The travesty!_ of him having so little pipe-weed at his disposal given his sacrifices and his limited time on these shores and this aging, needy body.

Minas Tirith (and the cowering tradesman who had given him the bad news and witnessed his face redden with mounting displeasure) was spared the wizardly wrath when – _finally thank the gods!_ – three young soldiers heard of Gandalf's plight and offered to share their rations.

They were amongst the many uniformed servicemen dispatched around the city, which was still under guard and curfew while it recovered. They told the wizard they had been tasked with its defense while the more experienced soldiers had fought alongside Gandalf before the Black Gates, but that they knew of his heroism.

"This is the least we could do for you," they said enthusiastically, and he happily stood with them as they talked about their lives and work. He was amongst the soldiers when he heard the arrival of two good friends.

"I made that for use, not ornamentation!" Gimli the Dwarf berated the companion who walked gaily beside him, the elf Legolas, who was swinging along an admittedly ornate cane that was so well-made it could have been used even without infirmity and only for affectation.

The wood-elf, who'd gone from broken leg to crutches to finally, the cane, was just toying with it now. He twirled it in his adroit fingers, pointed it at things, let it swing wide with his strides. He was already walking better than Gandalf.

"I didn't need it during the wedding, did I, Elvellon?"

"A few hours on a healing leg for the sake of your vanity is one thing," Gimli snapped, "It is quite different for daily functioning!"

"Vanity?!" exclaimed the prince, aghast.

Beside them walked an older wood-elf, Maenor, whom the wizard recognized as a high councilor of the Elvenking Thranduil of the Woodland, as well as the best healer of their land. He had been dispatched in care of the injured prince, whose recovery since Maenor's arrival had been very speedy indeed.

"Let him swing it around as he wills for a moment, Master Dwarf," Maenor laughingly said. "He might not remember it but he used to do that as a child with fallen branches and things. Pretending to be like his _adar_ you see, except the Elvenking had a straight sword and occasionally, royal staff or scepter."

Legolas pointedly ignored them then and instead, called out to Gandalf delightedly. He stepped toward the wizard with much enthusiasm, and a half-hearted attempt to stop pretending to be Thranduil and begin using the cane as directed by its irate maker. His cheerful approach, however, was marked by a slight wrinkle on the nose of his otherwise smiling face at the sight and smell of the pipe-weed. The Woodland Prince also stood an arm farther away from Gandalf and the soldiers than Gimli did, whose interest was piqued.

Beside him, Gandalf felt a slight hesitation on the part of the young soldiers, who correctly assumed their supply was now about to be further diminished.

"Any to spare for this poor Dwarf?" Gimli asked them, knowing they would offer whatever they had for a hero of the War, a member of the Fellowship, a friend to their King, and a well-loved figure amongst the soldiers.

The group then stood on the sides of the road, speaking about improvements on the city and things they were planning on doing in the coming days and months. Gandalf listened on quietly as he smoked, and hid the smile in his lips. It was delightful, hearing about hopes and plans again.

The idyll was disturbed by the sound of a strange rumbling and a vibration at their feet, and for a war-ravaged city and a traumatized people, any potentially threatening sensation was met by sudden caution or frozen horror.

"Help!" someone suddenly yelled, from somewhere up the road.

"Out of the way! Out of the way!"

"Watch out!"

No one knew what was going on, but the three soldiers promptly went on full alert. It was still the wood-elf warrior among them though, who moved first.

As the rumbling sound became louder and louder, he pushed the whole lot of them out of the way of what looked to be a runaway, heavy-laden wagon that all but _whooshed!_ past them, careening along wildly on the down-sloping road. That's what it looked like, at least; it flew past in a blur, and Legolas had shoved them aside so roughly that a few of their party, Gandalf included, landed on their rump on the ground.

The wood-elf dropped his cane and went running down after it, Gimli and the three soldiers scrambling to their feet and following at his heels.

From where Gandalf and the healer Maenor were seated on the ground, they could hear the rumble of the runaway wagon become more distant, trailed by sounds of screaming and crashing before everything suddenly became silent.

"Make haste my lord," Gandalf said to the healer beside him, "They will have need of you, I think."

# # #

* * *

# # #

The scene that met them when they arrived was chaos.

A wary crowd had built around a partially-upturned wagon, which leaned precariously against a stone wall, leaving only a small, triangular gap between it, the wall and the ground. There was detritus everywhere – broken ropes and splintered crates, goods and works abandoned in haste as people in the streets dropped everything and got out of the way, and the items that could not escape the runaway wagon and had consequently been crushed in its wake.

There was a dead dog, and a horse in its last breaths being soothed by its owner as someone poised to put a merciful spear through to its heart. There were a number of people ailing too – mostly superficial scrapes, and a few were limping. It could have been worse, Gandalf thought grimly. It all could have been much worse.

But then, maybe it was.

For there was fervent energy and anxiety amongst the soldiers still, and Legolas and Gimli among them. The elf and the dwarf were amongst a line of warriors and able-bodied men who had positioned themselves around the fallen, heavy wagon, bracing to lift it.

"Get out of here, Legolas!" Gimli told his companion exasperatedly. It sounded like it was the continuation or repetition of an ongoing argument, but then again all of their conversations had that air. "That leg of yours might give!"

"It will hold, Elvellon," Legolas muttered, "Do not mind me and just heave."

"Stop!" Maenor suddenly said as he ran forward, pushing past the crowds to the wagon. Gandalf followed him. The healer's authoritative voice was heeded, though the soldiers, Legolas and Gimli kept their ready positions.

"Is there someone pinned beneath the vehicle-" he asked urgently before exclaiming to Legolas, "Is that yours?!"

They got a better view of the Woodland Prince then, and his tunic was bloodied from belly to collarbone, with streaks at his breeches. He barely gave himself a glance.

"There is a woman trapped underneath," Legolas replied quickly. "I reached her but cannot extract her or help her."

"No lifting until I have a chance to examine!" Maenor commanded, already divesting himself of his robes and very much meaning to squirm beneath the vehicle and check on the injured woman.

"My lord, no," Legolas said. "It is very tight quarters and the balance is precarious and shifting."

"This fool elf nearly got crushed himself!" Gimli exclaimed.

"No one else could get through safely," Legolas said, "And I'm afraid it's been awhile since you needed to exercise the light feet and stealth required."

"Listen to me Thranduilion," Maenor said determinedly, still removing his heavier pieces of clothing. "This needs doing and I will tell you why. If she is freed blindly from being pinned, you can hasten her demise. If she has crushed bones and dead muscle, they contain excretions that are poisonous to the body. If the weight obstructing these injuries from the rest of her is removed, all that poison is unleashed to her heart, to her kidneys and so on, which may kill her sooner than it can be stopped. Second, if she has severed veins and arteries, and she might given how bloodied you look, the weight pinning her acts as a tourniquet; it is keeping her from bleeding out. If we remove it hastily, she could exsanguinate.

"Now what you lot are planning was sound because she would have had no other access to immediate help," Maenor said, "But I am here now, and we need to try. If I cannot reach her, you may proceed. But we need to try. Now explain to me what I should expect."

Legolas grit his teeth but, understanding the logic, nodded.

"She is pinned from the hip down to her legs," he said, "these I could not even see, but from how the blood pools and runs from there, an open wound in that area can be expected. Her left arm is also pinned and unreachable. She has no visible injury elsewhere, not even a scratch to her face. She is conscious if slightly drifting, but can be alert. She is aware of her predicament, and had asked me to find her father in the city. We have his name, and have already dispatched soldiers to bring him here. Her pain is surprisingly minimal. She is very cold, though. I gave her my cloak but offered no other form of relief. I am not certain she could tolerate water."

Maenor nodded. "She is young, seems otherwise healthy and strong?"

"Yes," Legolas answered.

"All right then perhaps we have a chance," the healer murmured, though he sounded skeptical. Legolas led the way around the wagon, to the narrow opening and relatively safe path he had earlier crawled through to get to the poor victim. Only one person could fit in at a time, and only a lithe one. Gandalf listened with half an ear as the younger elf explained to the older what to do and what to watch out for.

The wizard, on the other hand, busied himself asking for the small healers' packs he knew Gondorian soldiers tended to be dispatched with. There ought to be herbs there that could be of good use.

Maenor vanished beneath the wagon, while Legolas, Gimli and everyone else there hovered around nervously. The upturned vehicle groaned and whined with Maenor's movements from within and beneath it, and they all held their breaths and braced to offer support, but it quickly quieted and stilled. In moments, they heard murmurs of the elven healer's conversation with the trapped woman.

As they spoke and Maenor went about his examination, an engineer for the city who was working on a structure nearby arrived, and started walking around the accident site and conversing animatedly with Gimli on how to quickly and effectively stabilize the vehicle so that the woman could be extracted.

"Legolas!" Maenor called from beneath the wagon, "I need some assistance."

The Woodland Prince lowered himself to his haunches by the 'entrance' to the interior of the wreckage and listened to Maenor's requests. Gandalf was ready with most of them, handing over many of the supplies he had acquired from the soldiers, which Legolas then crawled through the wreckage to deliver to Maenor piecemeal, before backing away to receive and deliver more. The quarters were that tight.

The one thing Gandalf did not have but many of the people around them hurriedly accommodated were sturdy straps and belts for a tourniquet. The wizard was heartened by the Gondorians' earnest concern and quick actions on behalf of the sufferer. Little by little, each generously shared and anonymously offered supply vanished beneath the wagon, delivered along by a foreign prince who crawled and squirmed on his belly and his hands and knees.

When all of Maenor's requests had been accommodated, Legolas stood on his knees on the ground near the opening, waiting for further instructions. He was well and truly grimed and bloodied now, and Gandalf wondered how that woman could still be alive. Anyone who had lost the amount of precious red on Thranduilion's clothes was likely near death by now, not even counting the red that started to run and streak on the ground.

"_Ernil_!" Maenor called out again, and the wood-elf listened attentively.

"I am here," he said.

"I have stabilized her as best as I can," Maenor reported, and his voice became louder and less muffled as he apparently left the girl and started crawling backwards out towards them, "but her left arm is badly pinned and I can get to it, but the space is too narrow and I do not have enough leverage with which to arrange and pull a good tourniquet. I could use an archer's dexterous fingers, I think. Your digits might have the strength for it, even with limited space."

Not many saw it but Gandalf did, the slight, nervous gulp and intake of air that the young Prince made before replying, "Come out, I am ready."

He was. The moment Maenor was clear of the wreckage, he gave Legolas a briefing on what to do while the elf squirmed his way through the path that led to that – Gandalf was almost certain now - that dying girl.

The wizard sent a prayer up to the gods, nonetheless. They've gone through the impossible end of unlikely odds before, and maybe he hasn't exhausted his cachet with them yet. _Maybe_.

He looked about him. By his side stood the bloodied and grimed elven healer whose wise eyes already held the outcome of this increasingly fruitless exercise, even as he also knew they had to keep trying. Around them were the Godorians, horrified but alert, eager to help, and measuredly hopeful. There was also Gimli and that engineer with their productive and scientific minds, which raced with solutions to immediate, solvable problems like the stabilization of a wagon and the retrieval of the body beneath it. Already, the two had drafted a team of soldiers who were shoring up the wreckage at strategic points, using bricks and pipes and other construction material.

"How are we doing, _ernil-nin_?" Maenor called out to Legolas.

"I almost have it!" came the prince's reply.

Maenor turned to Gandalf. "Once he has that ready there is a decision someone must make."

Gandalf raised an eyebrow at the healer, wondering who that someone would be, given that there were no clear lines of command in their current situation. "Go on," Gandalf urged him to explain.

"Once the tourniquet is done she will be as physically ready as we can possibly make her," Maenor replied. "She will already have the best chance at survival in her situation. We can heave the vehicle from her now, and she can be free and brought to better aid. But once we do that, she will quickly lose consciousness and I am almost certain she might never wake again."

"And what is the decision that needs to be made?" Gandalf asked.

"Do we wait for the father she asked us to seek?" Maenor said. "That they may say goodbye, if the worst should come to pass? Or do we simply extricate her as quickly as possible to maximize her unlikely chances?"

"She wants to wait for her _adar_!" Legolas suddenly called out, apparently hearing the conversation and consulting with the woman.

Gandalf looked at Maenor grimly and lowered his voice. "I suppose we can, for a little while." They might as well wait, if she were to die anyway.

"I am done with the tourniquet!" Legolas reported. "It seems sound-"

Suddenly, a commotion. Gandalf turned in the direction of the sound, and found the gathered Gondorians parting and making way for a new arrival.

It was a thin, frail old man, long gaunt from some kind of sickness but now even more drawn for worry. If he was capable of walking it was not apparent, for he was cradled in the arms of a breathless soldier who had hurriedly delivered him to them.

Gandalf's heart jerked in his chest. The old man had no hopes of getting beneath that accursed wagon and crawling on his belly to his dying daughter. This was it. This was as close as they were going to get to each other.

"Her father is here, Legolas!" Maenor cried.

Gandalf heard the wood-elf give cheery encouragements to the woman, something along the vein of - "Ah, see? Your _adar_ is here!"

"I did tell you to just hold on."

"Everything will be all right..."

How someone as forbidding as Thranduil had ever raised someone so sunny in that darkened forest of his would always be a mystery to Gandalf – and the wizard's heart ached at the young elf's false hopes. By the gods, he did not even know he was lying, did he?

"Should I come out now?" Legolas called out.

"In a moment!" Maenor called back, focusing his attentions on the girl's ailing father, so that he may be able to explain the situation and discuss their options.

When the weakened old man's well-lined face crumpled and he started weeping quietly, Gandalf turned his eyes away.

# # #

* * *

# # #

There was no safe or healthy means by which the old man was going to be able to reach the trapped woman. They all knew it. But Gimli the Dwarf and the city engineer crafted a solution that would at least allow father and daughter to have some contact.

Maenor stayed with the old man, for he was also ailing and would soon have to make a decision upon his daughter's fate. Legolas stayed with the young woman in the wreckage. Gimli and the engineer created an access hole near where the woman lay trapped, such that father and daughter would be able to see each other.

"You have a few moments to speak," Maenor told him gently. "And then we must lift the wagon and free her, if she is to have any sort of chance at surviving. But say what you need to say, for the odds are very, very poor, and you both have a right to know that."

The old man nodded, and he dried his eyes and steeled his face before leaning toward the hole crafted by Gimli and the engineer. He also reached in with a quaking hand toward his dying child within. His daughter had no strength to lift her only free arm to clasp him back though, and her eyes watered at her inability. Wordlessly, Legolas did it for her, and he kept her strengthless arm lifted as father and daughter finally held each other.

"Father," she said, voice thin and breathy. "I am sorry...I... I wouldn't be able t-t-to care for you... anymore."

The old man gripped her hand desperately.

Gandalf wondered how he would play it, for this was a scene he in his uncountable years have borne witness to many a time. Would he resort to comforting lies, as Legolas had? Or Gimli's constructive productivity? Or Maenor's managed expectations? Would he comfort, or be the one to receive it? Would he make unfair demands the wretched woman had no ability to give – 'be strong, stay with me...' Would he rage at the gods and the sorry state of passing like this at a time of victory? Or would he receive his and his daughter's fate with resignation, prayer and peace?

They held each other quietly for a long moment, but she was drifting, and the old man spoke at last –

"I had hoped for better things for you, child," he said softly, "I am sorry it's come to this. Sorry I could not forge for you a better world. Sorrier than I can say. When you sleep, know that you bear my heart with you away. And soon, we will be together in paradise with your mother and all your brothers. You have cared for all of us well, and no one could ask for a better daughter. No more pain, child. No more pain. Think only of love."

He spoke soothingly, and she had closed her eyes and smiled. The lines of strain and grief vanished from her face, and Gandalf thought she was beautiful.

"We set her free now," the old man said to Maenor, even though he still clutched his daughter's hand fiercely.

Maenor nodded. "Legolas," he called out, and handed the younger elf a piece of cloth he had doused in sleeping oils. "Put this to her face, make sure it covers her nose and mouth."

The wood-elf kept one hand to the woman's arm that he was supporting, and reached with his free one to receive the cloth. He used it as instructed and the woman breathed it in with barely a reaction. In moments, she was deeply asleep.

"She will feel no pain," Maenor promised the father, who nodded and with a final, frantic squeeze, released his daughter's hand. Legolas lowered it to her side and patted at her knuckles reassuringly, even as she was past knowing it.

"You need to remove yourself from there, _hir-nin_," Maenor told his prince. "The structure is as secured as possible from what we could see here, but there are too many unknowns. If they heave and things break or fall, you may get caught."

"I would rather stay if I am not in the way," said the other quietly. "If a sober dwarf arranged it, I have every confidence."

Gimli, who had overheard, snorted but said nothing. Maenor looked to Gandalf, but the wizard had nothing to say either. There was no talking Legolas into abandoning a dying woman right at the point of extreme danger.

In Sindarin, Maenor hissed at his prince: "I have no intentions of comforting another grieving father if you get my meaning, Thranduilion."

"You won't have to," Legolas said stubbornly.

Maenor sighed. Gandalf knew what it meant.

"Listen close!" the wizard called out to the soldiers who started to position themselves at strategic points around the wagon. "We lift in 3, 2 –"

# # #

* * *

# # #

She was alive when they pulled her out.

But to everyone's shock, there was another body with her.

It was crushed to grotesque flatness, hidden from sight and pinned from head to toe by large barrels and wheels and planks of wood, dead the moment he had been hit.

After the wagon was lifted and the destroyed body discovered, there were gasps of shock and horrified wails, and a handful of the people around them blanched or turned green and became promptly sick.

Beside Gandalf, a horrified Legolas ran clawed hands over his hair before resting them over his ears, as if blocking off sound. He had paled too, and started taking heaving breaths.

"You could not have known," Gandalf felt compelled to tell him, "and even if you did – there was nothing to be done."

It took the elf a beat, but he nodded his head and lowered his hands. He wiped them over his already heavily soiled shirt, and when he froze, Gandalf realized he now understood a lot of the blood and gore on him had belonged not only to the woman but also the unknown, crushed Gondorian man.

After the woman was retrieved, Maenor went with her broken body to the healing halls to try and save her. Gimli remained in the accident premises with most of the soldiers and other engineers to further secure the damaged areas. Legolas, who had meant to assist the woman's father to the healing halls after her, had been anxiously steered away from him by the Gondorian soldiers. He was a horrifying sight, they said, and Gandalf had to agree – everywhere on him was blood of different provenances, in various stages of bold red freshness and crumbling, dried rust.

"You've done your share, Thranduilion," Gandalf said to him sternly, "Go to your chambers in the King's residences and make yourself presentable."

Legolas glanced at his clothes again and grimaced, did not disagree. He stood his ground a moment longer and watched the unhappy procession of the woman and her father and the healers, though.

"They survived the War," he murmured. "Yet victory and peace brings them this. There is almost a cruelty to it - no sense, and no justice."

"Life unfolds thus," Gandalf said, not unkindly, but firmly.

"So it does," the elf muttered, somewhat distractedly as he wiped his hands fruitlessly upon his soiled clothes. "I shall uh, I shall do as you say, Mithrandir, and change out of these horrid things."

Gandalf watched him go, then quickly turned to more immediate matters: the man who had been driving around that burdensome wagon before it snapped from moorings and slid so damagingly down the streets had been found. He was weeping, apologetic, inconsolable... and also the subject of an increasingly heated mob that began to gather around him.

# # #

* * *

# # #

The woman was dead within the day.

Her long-ailing father followed by nightfall.

The unknown Gondorian who had been crushed with her remained unidentified. He was slight and from what had been recovered of him, he was determined by the healers to be a young adult male, but that was the extent of information available at least for awhile, for no one had come looking for him. It was widely believed he might not have had anyone else in his life... and with a cruel twist of fate, even that empty life had been taken from him. His existence had been all but wiped from the face of the world.

# # #

* * *

# # #

That evening's meal had its most somber moment early on, when the King shared brief kind thoughts not only about the people who had died in the wagon incident, but also a few other fatalities since the end of the War. There were gravely injured soldiers who had lingered on but ultimately breathed their last, and one or two people who were also the victims of some post-War construction mishap – an old man who needed funds and had died pushing himself to exhaustion, a strapping young man who had an unexpectedly weak heart and had simply keeled over dead at a work site. There was a suicide – a soldier who came home a hero only to find his family did not survive the assaults upon the city and though for a while he tried, decided he was lost without them.

"Let us all take care of each other," Aragorn said in conclusion of his address to the group of nobles, councilors, dignitaries still in the City after his wedding, and his and his Queen's intimates present at the dinner.

"Watch each other, look after each other, value each other. Even in victory a lot of us will be orphans, widows, widowers, grieving, troubled, less abled... the world is changed and within it, also ourselves. We put down our swords and spears and reach for spades and hammers. We trade logs of the dead for work ledgers. We exchange war cries for hello's on the streets and conversations at our tables. Where we used to lock our doors and shutter our windows, let us open our minds and our hearts. Look in on your friends. Make new ones. Reach out and be kind, waste not a moment of our lives anew. Every moment from here on out is a gift."

The speech ended with a toast for the dead, and then the merriment began. Gandalf looked about him at the festive scene. It was happy enough, but already a more subdued affair than the unsustainable bacchanalian madness of feasts that surrounded Elessar's wedding. Life was swinging toward a new normal, and Gandalf for one welcomed it. It was the way of things.

If anyone could be counted upon for continued shenanigans, however...

Peregrin and Meriadoc, clearly unburdened by the dignified mantle of their heroic deeds and the newly-acquired titles they had to show for it, were making proper fools of themselves atop another table armed with ale.

Ah, but even for Pippin it was perhaps more by design than folly, nowadays. Gandalf could feel all the show of it, especially as the young Took and Merry occasionally glanced at each other and made themselves more outrageous whenever their Ringbearer friends looked exhausted and adrift.

_A changed world indeed..._

Speaking of adrift, Gandalf's gaze found the fair face of Thranduil's son across the room. The last time he'd seen the wood-elf he was grotesquely bloody, but tonight he was resplendent in dinner formals. He looked like the prince that he was, especially surrounded by a small coterie of his father's courtiers. But he was disengaged, nodding absently at conversations.

But he slanted his eyes up at Gandalf, feeling him stare. He raised an eloquent eyebrow (_almost_ worthy of his father) at the wizard, who gave him a solemn nod. The prince returned it, before turning his attentions better toward his company. He was especially enlivened by the arrival of his bawdy Elvellon.

# # #

* * *

# # #

Another day in the City, and amongst the many times Gandalf found himself accosted by its people, twice was late in the day and in relation to Legolas Greenleaf.

First, someone had found the handsome cane the elf dropped in his haste to help during the accident of the day prior. Second, someone had retrieved and washed and pressed the cloak the prince had given that dying woman to stay warm. They would have had it sent up, they said, but the wizard was good friends with Legolas Greenleaf and certain to see him sooner, wasn't he? And they dared not approach those other elves, they added, for they looked _oh so forbidding, didn't they_?

Gandalf's temper spiked, for what it meant was that they would rather saddle him in this old form, with an errand that necessitated carrying along Legolas Greenleaf's things on top of navigating his own walking stick?! Did they have no care or consideration for an old man (even if he was a wizard within)?

Instead of becoming angry, Gandalf commandeered a nearby soldier who was patrolling the streets. The flustered young man, he decided, would carry the returned items for him, but he would accompany them and see them back to their proper owner as requested.

It was the end of a long day when Gandalf finally trudged up to the residences with his shuffling escort.

What he found there made him realize dragging Legolas' things around was the easy part.

# # #

* * *

# # #

The Prince of Eryn Lasgalen seemed to be missing.

There was a small gathering of varied folks outside the cracked-open doors of his chambers.

"He is not inside," insisted one of his guards, "Look for yourself!"

The trouble, apparently, lay with how the wood-elf had excused himself from the day's duties and said he had tasks to accomplish with Gimli the Dwarf, except Gimli the Dwarf claimed Legolas had deigned from joining him in his day's excursions owing to his duties to his Eryn Lasgalen council. He'd not been seen all day even at meals, and the two guards who usually accompanied him he had sent away to stand in his stead at the meetings, it being that they also doubled as his secretary and general assistant.

He was not in his rooms and he'd not been spotted at the city, said Meriadoc and Peregrin, while Samwise and Frodo had shared Legolas' warhorse Arod was still at the stables. The Rangers of Ithilien, whom the prince on occasion escaped to, claimed no knowledge of his whereabouts and volunteered for immediate deployment on a search under their very captain, Faramir – who was about to seek permission from Elessar to do so.

Gandalf watched the small group discuss further options amongst themselves as they drifted off collectively in the general direction of wherever it was they thought Aragorn might be at that moment.

"A wood-elf who does not want to be found will simply not be found!" someone was insisting.

"But what reason could he possibly have to vanish without a trace?"

"Gardens," someone else declared. "Or if not, the nearest wooded forest. That is where he would be."

"Somewhere scandalously high," another hazarded a guess. "Up in the ramparts of a tower-"

Gandalf watched them go, and they were oblivious to him. He tilted his head in the direction of the half-open doors of the Prince's chambers, and wondered.

He took his drafted soldier's burdens of Legolas' cane and cloak, then dismissed him with a murmured thanks. The young man was so relieved to be excused from the wizard's presence that he scurried away without looking back.

Gandalf stretched out his senses to the rooms before him, and almost swayed with the jarring sensation of sea wind and spray, and noise, that majestic noise of innumerable waves slapping against rock and shore, forming the shape of the Earth. He felt kisses of salt on his lips, and grains of sand at his feet, shifting, shifting, shifting until they covered his toes and crawled up to his ankles and anchored him. The wind whipped, the waves crashed, and the thick clouds gathered and danced, as if there was a storm brewing somewhere in the near distance, over the ocean –

He drew himself away, and dragged his mind and soul back to Minas Tirith. He set his lips into a grim line, and he stepped inside Legolas' chambers and closed the door behind him.

# # #

* * *

# # #

The wood-elf was not in the antechambers.

Nor was he on his bed.

In the sleeping room, gentle breezes stirred the curtains about the open windows and balcony doors that the wood-elf's quarters had been provided with. The room and the entire scene was quiet and pristine, and it really did look empty except Gandalf felt differently.

He moved around the large, untouched bed.

And _there!_ on its other side, the one away from the door and facing out toward the balconies – the elf lay on the floor, curled about himself, deathly still, staring at nothing. Hidden indeed, from view.

Gandalf's heart jumped a little at the sight, and he ached to shoot forward to touch his friend and revive him from this misery, but Gandalf knew he had to approach with caution. Even as burdened as Legolas was by the sea, one knew better than to catch a decorated wood-elf soldier by surprise.

"Legolas," Gandalf said softly, as he lowered himself to sit on the ground. He made sure to keep a wide berth. "Legolas."

The wood-elf blinked himself to awareness, and he let his eyes drift and settle upon the wizard in his room.

"Gandalf," he finally said, in a voice grave and unused. Neither of them moved, as if fearing to shatter some unspoken, tentative peace.

"You know, Thranduilion, you have turned the King's house upside down with people looking for you."

Legolas closed his eyes for a moment, and huffed out an irritated exhale. "All I wanted was a morning to myself, and one cannot even have that."

"You've been gone the whole day," Gandalf told him gently. "It is night."

The wood-elf opened his eyes, but was otherwise unable to summon enough desire to care.

"Is this about that accident?" Gandalf asked. "The one with that woman and her father?"

Legolas winced. It clearly was, but instead he murmured, "Why would it bother me? I did not know them."

Gandalf let it slip, for the moment. He asked instead, "Did you get hurt in any way?"

"On the contrary I am well-recovered," Legolas replied. After a long moment, he added – "My leg is healed, my strength restored. And yet..." he hesitated, and this was the kind of answer Gandalf knew would come.

"I still was not fast enough or strong enough or clever enough to change outcomes."

"Death still comes," Gandalf concluded.

"Death still comes," Legolas echoed.

_And it will keep coming_, neither of them bothered to say.

Deprived of war and its hungry, mass devouring of life, it will come after each mortal now with surgical precision, each person engraved with a specific, designed end.

Well,_ most_ persons here.

Gandalf regarded the Woodland Prince thoughtfully. They were friends of longstanding, really, though it was a designation and attachment Gandalf could not afford to give or have lightly during the long centuries of warring. Losing a friend hurt after all, even for a long-lived wizard who's had many and will have many more, and he never had the surprising luxury of grieving. There was always so much work to do. But now that all the work was done, he knew he could allow himself friendships... if he could also allow himself the inevitable partings and goodbye and pain they would entail.

His long years have taught him reserve. The wood-elf before him on the other hand, was not only young for the Eldar, he also hailed from a reclusive kingdom and inexperienced with mortality beyond death in war. The consequence was that he had given himself quite freely to his wartime friendships, the first mortals he knew and loved intimately, really.

And death will come for each of them later, no matter how _healed or fast or strong or clever_ Legolas was. Death will still come for everyone around him. The realization was devastating.

"How do you..." Legolas' voice drifted, and he need not have said the rest. Gandalf knew what he meant - how do you love with the guarantee of loss? How do you survive it? How do you go on?

Gandalf had no answers.

"I cannot stand their company at the moment," Legolas murmured. "They break so easily, even with time so short. I cannot bear them. I uh... I am well-healed now, and all business for my father here is almost at a close. I am thinking perhaps it is time that I came home."

_Home_, he had said with hope and longing. _Home..._

But then Gandalf _imagined? intelligently predicted? foresaw?_ that which awaited the young elven prince there.

_A child of the Woodland thundered home upon his mighty warhorse. In the horizon, he could see the tree line of his forest bisect the earth and the sky. The closer he came the hungrier he was to get there. He spurred his horse on, and behind him, his escorts cried out "Hyah!" in determined and triumphant cries as they followed their beloved Prince in their own powerful steeds. They were going to be the ones to bring him home._

_The warhorse's long, powerful strides ate ground leap by leap. The Prince grinned to himself, but then the smile shivered in his lips, suddenly tremulous for a realization hit him then._

_He should have heard the song of the trees by now._

_He spurred the warhorse on._

_They broke into the tree line and entered the path of the forest that led to his father's stronghold. The leaves and branches touched his hair, his arms, his cheeks – but it was as if all sound had gone._

_Was the forest dead, felled by the War after all?!_

_But behind him, his people each took in these mighty breaths, these ecstatic inhales of belonging and relief. They were home. Not him._

_He leapt from his horse to be closer to the ground, and he kept his mounting desperation quiet and secret. With bare palms he held the nearest trunk._

_Silence. He fell to his hands and knees and touched the ground, and clawed at the soil._

_His companions behind him humored him merrily – did ernil really miss home that much? – but there was mild worry growing beneath the jesting, and here began the stirrings of talk that perhaps the Elven Prince's mind had become troubled since the War._

_He walked on that familiar yet now-alien path home. He wondered if the Woodland had cut him off because he was not there to fight for her._

_What he did not know was that the land yearned for him as much as he did for it. That it knew what he had accomplished from far away, by the twitting of the birds and the whispers of the winds, by the roots of the trees in the paths he had trodden, winding into soil, connecting everything. What he did not know was that the trees sang louder just because he was near._

_He could not hear them, not over the din of the roaring sea that now rang in his ears every moment that he breathed. It underlined everything so much he could not discern it from ordinary hearing._

_Deaf to his welcome, the Prince promised the land he would be worthy of her again._

_He started the very next day, after he reunited with his father and let himself be feted the night of his return. He joined the work crews headed to the most damaged parts of the Wood, the parts still healing from the fires of the War. He worked on his hands and knees beside his people, fervently, relentlessly, day in and day out._

_The trees healed quickly in his hands because their song was louder, their light brighter, all in an attempt to reach him. But the sundering sea has sundered the elf from the Wood, too, even when the forest was loud in its gratitude and joy. He didn't -couldn't - believe his people when they noted the land's ardent response to his ministrations. All he knew was that he had been cut off, disinherited, disowned._

_He worked until his hands bled, and in the quiet, when they were alone, when there was no one to hear, he wept in his father's arms and lamented the trees no longer spoke to him._

_His father held him, and though the Elvenking lived through hellfire, here he trembled in fear._

Gandalf saw it as if it had already been lived and burdened, one of the final tragedies of the War of the Ring – Legolas Thranduilion, dead to the forest, at rest no more.

It was another thing Gandalf knew he now owed to Thrandiuil. He'd once brought dwarves and consequent chaos into that forest, had stirred Smaug brought the wood-elves to Battle and death amongst Five Armies. He'd dealt them more death when he, with Aragorn, begged they keep custody of the treacherous and wretched Gollum. And now, after everything, the final blow – he'd been amongst the Fellowship to bring the Elvenking's son within sphere of the sea and its siren song.

"It will not be as it was, Legolas," he told his friend. "You must know that, before you go."

"I know," the other confessed. "Yet go, I still must."

The elf lying beside him was pale and wan, and Gandalf reached forward to touch the young one's cheek. The wizard's human raiment was wrinkled and heavy and worn, especially against the immortal elf's alabaster skin.

"You are cold," he said with displeasure, tugging at the heavy blankets of the bed behind them and settling them about the elf. "Why on earth you've decided to sleep here on the ground is beyond me."

"Aragorn's beds are too soft," Legolas murmured, "I keep dreaming I am... sailing."

His eyes took on that abstract look again, and Gandalf was reminded that this poor elf, from the moment he heard the gulls, had been claimed by the sea. That the ocean's call upon his soul was always going to be just a step ahead or beside or behind wherever he was, at any time. It was always going to be too near, all the promises of it, all the taunting salvati9n of it, especially from earthbound misery.

_When you are in pain_, came its call,_ I will ease it if you would only come to me..._

"There is no rest to be had there," Legolas said. "I prefer the stillness of solid ground."

"You've acquired a preference for rock," Gandalf teased experimentally. "Spending too much time with a dwarf, have we?"

The elf rewarded him with a small smile, quickly abandoned though, for there was not enough tinder for these flickering flames.

"It really is night," Legolas said. "I must have been wearier than I thought."

Yet he made no move, not even a single twitch of a single muscle, to bother to rise. There was no wind in these sails, either. He was... spent.

Legolas glanced wearily at his door, and Gandalf saw in his eyes, all the miserable, unbearable distance of it, the miles that spread between remaining here and rising, from being alone to facing the world again. It was an unfathomable distance, and an almost unnavigable stretch of space.

"What will I tell them?" he asked, in a voice small and soft, and he sounded lost, more lost than Gandalf had ever heard him considering they'd faced evil and doom together, and the young elf was hardly a novice in war after centuries defending his homeland.

"They will ask me questions – where I've been, why I lied, why I let myself waste away here."

"Ah!" Gandalf cried out triumphantly, "Why Legolas Greenleaf, in this I can help, at least! You will tell everyone I had dispatched you to some wizardly business, the nature of which you are not at any liberty to discuss."

The elf unleashed a surprised, nervous, tremulous laugh. But his eyes shone with a dim hope, and Gandalf latched on to the flickering light.

"That will work?" the elf asked.

Gandalf killed the smile from his face illustratively. "You know it does," he said, with all manner of otherworldly power and menace. "You can expect no further inquiries thereafter, I can guarantee it. If not, direct them to me, and they will ask if they dare."

Legolas smiled, and he glanced at the doors uncertainly again. Gandalf read it in his eyes, that desperate desire to desire to rise, but needing more fuel, more wind, more fire, more time. That need to collect all the broken scrambled parts and reassemble the self.

"But if you don't mind," Gandalf said, "I would like stay here peacefully awhile."

He stretched his legs before him, and leaned on the bed behind, perpendicular to the elf who was still curled on the ground, his thigh touching the top of the prince's golden head.

"It's these blasted old bones," Gandalf said with appropriate venom and dispassion.

They stayed this way, quietly, as the night deepened.

"Thank you," Legolas said, an indeterminate time later.

"Whatever for," Gandalf muttered irritably, before placing a warm, weathered palm over the other's weary head.

**THE END**  
July 8, 2019


End file.
